iillii'i,,. 


i'i:ii;'';P(^'iji 


ili.i!:^ 


LOVE'S    COMING-OF-AGE 


A  SERIES  OF  PAPERS 


THE  RELATIONS  OF  THE  SEXES 


EDWARD  ^ARPENTER 

Author  of  "  Towards  Democracy,''    ''England's  Ideal,^^  Etc. 


CHICAGO 

STOCKHAM  PUBLISHING  CO. 

1902 


[The  little  god  of  Love  is  generally  represented  as  a  child; 
and  rightly  J  perhaps,  considering  the  erratic  character  of  his 
ways  among  the  human  race.  There  are  signs,  however,  of  a 
new  order  in  the  relations  of  the  Sexes;  and  the  folloioing  papers 
are,  among  other  things^  an  attempt  to  indicate  the  inner  laws 
which,  rather  than  the  outer,  may  guide  Love  when — some  day 
—he  shall  have  come  to  his  full  estate.\ 


CONTENTS 

PAGB 

The  Sex-Passion             ..          ..          ..          ..  7 

Man,  the  Uncrown  . .          . .          . .          . .  39 

Woman:  THE  Serf            ..          ..          ..          ..  38 

Woman  IN  Freedom  ..          ..          ..          ..  55 

Marriage.    A  Retrospect         ..          ..          ..  73 

Marriage:    A  Forecast       ..          ..          ..  91 

The  Free  Society           ..          ..          ..          ..  112 

Some  Remarks  on  the  Early  Star  and  Sex 

Worships             ..          ..          ..          ••  129 

Notes — 

On  the  Primitive  Group- Marriage        136 

Jealousy              140 

The  Family             143 

Preventive  Checks  to  Population    . .                    . .  146 

Appendix    ..          ..          ..          ..          ..          ..  151 


THE  SEX-PASSION 


'T*  HE  subject  of  Sex  is  difficult  to  deal  with.  There 
is  no  doubt  a  natural  reticence  connected  with 
it.  There  is  also  a  great  deal  of  prudery.  The  passion 
occupies,  without  being  spoken  of,  a  large  part  of 
human  thought;  and  words  on  the  subject  being  so 
few  and  inadequate,  everything  that  is  said  is  liable 
to  be  misunderstood.  Violent  inferences  are  made 
and  equivocations  surmised,  from  the  simplest  re- 
marks ;  qualified  admissions  of  liberty  are  interpreted 
into  recommendations  of  unbridled  license;  and  gen- 
erally the  perspective  of  literary  expression  is  turned 
upside  down. 

There  is  in  fact  a  vast  deal  of  fetishism  in  the  cur- 
rent treatment  of  the  question.  Nor  can  one  alto- 
gether be  surprised  at  this  when  one  sees  how  im- 
portant Sex  is  in  the  scheme  of  things,  and  how  deeply 
it  has  been  associated  since  the  earliest  times  not  only 
with  man's  personal  impulses  but  even  with  his  re- 
ligious sentiments  and  ceremonials. 

Next  to  hunger  it  is  doubtless  the  most  primitive 
and  imperative  of  our  needs.  But  in  modern  civilized 
life  Sex  enters  probably  even  more  into  consciousness 


8  love's  coming-of-age 

than  hunger.  For  the  hunger-needs  of  the  human 
race  are  in  the  later  societies  fairly  well  satisfied,  but 
the  sex-desires  are  strongly  restrained,  both  by  law 
and  custom,  from  satisfaction — and  so  assert  them- 
selves all  the  more  in  thought. 

To  find  the  place  of  these  desires,  their  utterance, 
their  control,  their  personal  import,  their  social  im- 
port, is  a  tremendous  problem  to  every  youth  and  girl, 
man  and  woman. 

There  are  a  few  of  both  sexes,  doubtless,  who 
hardly  feel  the  passion — who  have  never  been  *'in 
love,"  and  who  experience  no  strong  sexual  appetite 
— but  these  are  rare.  Practically  the  passion  is  a  mat- 
ter of  universal  experience ;  and  speaking  broadly  and 
generally  we  may  say  it  is  a  matter  on  which  it  is  quite 
desirable  that  every  adult  at  some  time  or  other  should 
have  actual  experience.  There  may  be  exceptions; 
but,  as  said,  the  instinct  lies  so  deep  and  is  sO'  univer- 
sal, that  for  the  understanding  of  life — of  one's  own 
life,  of  that  of  others,  and  of  human  nature  in  general 
— as  well  as  for  the  proper  development  of  one's  own 
capacities,  such  experience  is  as  a  rule  needed. 

And  here  in  passing  I  would  say  that  in  the  social 
life  of  the  future  this  need  will  surely  be  recognized, 
and  that  (while  there  will  be  no  stigma  attaching  to 
voluntary  celibacy)  the  state  of  enforced  ceHbacy  in 
which  vast  numbers  of  women  live  to-day  will  be 
looked  upon  as  a  national  wrong,  almost  as  grievous 


THE    SEX-PASSION  9 

as  that  of  prostitution — of  which  latter  evil  indeed  it  is 
in  some  degree  the  counterpart  or  necessary  accom- 
paniment. 

Of  course  Nature  (personifying  under  this  term 
the  more  unconscious,  even  though  human,  instincts 
and  forces)  takes  pretty  good  care  in  her  own  way 
that  sex  shall  not  be  neglected.  She  has  her  own 
purposes  to  work  out,  which  in  a  sense  have  nothing 
to  do  with  the  individual — her  racial  purposes.  But 
she  acts  in  the  rough,  with  tremendous  sweep  and 
power,  and  with  little  adjustment  to  or  consideration 
for  the  later  developed  and  more  conscious  and  in- 
telligent ideals  of  humanity.  The  youth,  deeply  in- 
fected with  the  sex-passion,  suddenly  finds  himself  in 
the  presence  of  Titanic  forces — the  Titanic  but  sub- 
conscious forces  of  his  own  nature.  'Tn  love"  he  feels 
a  superhuman  impulse — and  naturally  so,  for  he  iden- 
tifies himself  with  cosmic  energies  and  entities,  powers 
that  are  preparing  the  future  of  the  race,  and  whose 
operations  extend  over  vast  regions  of  space  and  mil- 
lennial lapses  of  time.  He  sees  into  the  abysmal  deeps 
of  his  own  being,  and  trembles  with  a  kind  of  awe  at 
the  disclosure.  And  what  he  feels  concerning  himself 
he  feels  similarly  concerning  the  one  who  has  inspired 
his  passion.  The  glances  of  the  two  lovers  penetrate 
far  beyond  the  surface,  ages  down  into  each  other, 
waking  a  myriad  antenatal  dreams. 

For  the  moment  he  lets  himself  go,  rejoicing  in 


lo  love's    coming-of-age 

the  sense  of  limitless  power  beneath  him — borne  on- 
wards like  a  man  down  rapids,  too  intoxicated  with 
the  glory  of  motion  to  think  of  whither  he  is  going ; 
then  the  next  moment  he  discovers  that  he  is  being 
hurried  into  impossible  situations — situations  which 
his  own  moral  conscience,  as  well  as  the  moral  con- 
science of  Society,  embodied  in  law  and  custom,  will 
not  admit.  He  finds  perhaps  that  the  satisfaction  of 
his  imperious  impulse  is,  to  all  appearances,  inconsist- 
ent with  the  welfare  of  her  he  loves.  His  own  passion 
arises  before  him  as  a  kind  of  rude  giant  which  he  or 
the  race  to  which  he  belongs  may,  Frankenstein-like, 
have  created  ages  back,  but  which  he  now  has  to 
dominate  or  be  dominated  by ;  and  there  declares  itself 
in  him  the  fiercest  conflict — that  between  his  far-back 
Tiianic  instinctive  and  sub-conscious  nature,  and  his 
later  developed,  more  especially  human  and  moral  self. 
While  the  glory  of  Sex  pervades  and  sufifuses  all 
Nature;  while  the  flowers  are  rayed  and  starred  out 
towards  the  sun  in  the  very  ecstasy  of  generation; 
while  the  nostrils  of  the  animals  dilate,  and  their  forms 
become  instinct,  under  the  passion,  with  a  proud  and 
fiery  beauty;  while  even  the  human  lover  is  trans- 
formed, and  in  the  great  splendors  of  the  mountains 
and  the  sky  perceives  something  to  which  he  had  not 
the  key  before — yet  it  is  curious  that  just  here,  in 
Man,  we  find  the  magic  wand  of  Nature  suddenly 
broken,  and  doubt  and  conflict  and  division  entering 


THE    SEX-PASSION  II 

in,  where  a  kind  of  unconscious  harmony  had  erst 
prevailed. 

And  the  reason  of  this  is  not  far  to  seek.  For  in 
comparing,  as  we  did  a  page  or  two  back,  the  sex- 
needs  and  the  hunger-needs  of  the  human  race  we  left 
out  of  account  one  great  difference,  namely,  that 
while  food  (the  object  of  hunger)  has  no  moral  rights 
of  its  own,*  and  can  be  appropriated  without  mis- 
giving on  that  score,  the  object  of  sex  is  a  person, 
and  cannot  be  used  for  private  advantage  without  the 
most  dire  infringement  of  the  law  of  equality.  The 
moment  Man  rises  into  any  sort  of  consciousness  of 
the  equal  rights  of  others  with  himself  his  love- 
needs  open  up  this  terrible  problem.  His  needs  are  no 
less — perhaps  they  arc  greater — than  they  were  be- 
fore, but  they  are  stricken  with  a  deadly  swound  at 
the  thought  that  there  is  something  even  greater  than 
them. 

Heine  I  think  says  somewhere  that  the  man  who 
loves  unsuccessfully  knows  himself  to  be  a  god.  It  is 
not  perhaps  till  the  great  current  of  sexual  love  is 
checked  and  brought  into  conflict  with  the  other  parts 
of  his  being  that  the  whole  nature  of  the  man,  sexual 
and  moral,  under  the  tremendous  stress  rises  into  con- 
sciousness and  reveals  in  fire  its  god-like  quality.  This 
is  the  work  of  the  artificer  who  makes  immortal  souls 
— who  out  of  the  natural  love  evolves  even  a  more 

•Though  this  is  of  course  not  true  of   auimal   food. 


12 

perfect  love.  "In  tutti  gli  amanti,"  says  Giordano 
Bruno,  "e  questo  fabro  vulcano"  ("in  all  lovers  is  this 
Olympian  blacksmith  present"). 

It  is  the  subject  of  this  conflict,  or  at  least  differ- 
entiation, between  the  sexual  and  the  more  purely 
moral  and  social  instincts  in  man  which  interests  us 
here.  It  is  clear,  I  think,  that  if  sex  is  to  be  treated 
rationally,  that  is,  neither  superstitiously  on  the  one 
hand  nor  licentiously  on  the  other,  we  must  be  will- 
ing to  admit  that  both  the  satisfaction  of  the  passion 
and  the  non-satisfaction  of  it  are  desirable  and  beau- 
tiful. They  both  have  their  results,  and  man  has  to 
reap  the  fruits  which  belong  to  both  experiences.  May 
we  not  say  that  there  is  probably  some  sort  of  Trans- 
mutation of  essences  continually  effected  and  effectible 
in  the  human  frame  ?  Lust  and  Love — the  Aphrodite 
Pandemos  and  the  Aphrodite  Ouranios — are  subtly 
interchangeable.  Perhaps  the  corporeal  amatory  in- 
stinct and  the  ethereal  human  yearning  for  personal 
union  are  really  and  in  essence  one  thing  with  diverse 
forms  of  manifestation.  However  that  may  be,  it  is 
pretty  evident  that  there  is  some  deep  relationship 
between  them.  It  is  a  matter  of  common  experience 
that  the  unrestrained  outlet  of  merely  physical  desire 
leaves  the  nature  drained  of  its  higher  love-forces; 
while  on  the  other  hand,  if  the  physical  satisfaction  be 
denied,  the  body  becomes  surcharged  with  waves  of 
emotion — sometimes  to  an  unhealthy  and  dangerous 


THE    SEX-PASSION  1 3 

degree.  Yet  at  times  this  emotional  love  may,  by  rea- 
son of  its  expression  being  checked  or  restricted, 
transform  itself  into  the  all-penetrating  subtle  influ- 
ence of  spiritual  love. 

Marcus  Aurelius  quotes  a  saying  of  Heraclitus  to 
the  effect  that  the  death  of  earth  is  to  become  water 
(liquefaction),  and  the  death  of  water  is  to  become 
air  (evaporation),  and  the  death  of  air  is  to  become 
fire  (combustion).  So  in  the  human  body  are  there 
sensual,  emotional,  spiritual,  and  other  elements  of 
which  it  may  be  said  that  their  death  on  one  plane 
means  their  transformation  and  new  birth  on  other 
planes. 

It  will  readily  be  seen  that  I  am  not  arguing  that 
the  lower  or  more  physical  manifestations  of  love 
should  be  killed  out  in  order  to  force  the  growth  of 
the  more  spiritual  and  enduring  forms — because  Na- 
ture in  her  slow  evolutions  does  not  generally  coun- 
tenance such  high  and  mighty  methods;  but  am 
merely  trying  to  indicate  that  theie  are  grounds  for 
believing  in  the  transmutability  of  the  various  forms 
of  the  passion,  and  grounds  for  thinking  that  the  sac- 
rifice of  a  lower  phase  may  sometimes  be  the  only  con- 
dition on  which  a  higher  and  more  durable  phase  can 
be  attained ;  and  that  therefore  Restraint  (which  is  ab- 
solutely necessary  at  times)  has  its  compensation. 

Any  one  who  has  once  realized  how  glorious  a 
thing  Love  is  in  its  essence,  and  how  indestructible. 


14  love's   coming-of-age 

will  hardly  need  to  call  anything  that  leads  to  it  a 
sacrifice ;  and  he  is  indeed  a  master  of  life  who,  accept- 
ing the  grosser  desires  as  they  come  to  his  body,  and 
not  refusing  them,  knows  how  to  transform  them  at 
will  into  the  most  rare  and  fragrant  flowers  of  human 
emotion. 

Until  these  subjects  are  openly  put  before  children 
and  young  people  with  some  degree  of  intelligent 
and  sympathetic  handling,  it  can  scarcely  be  expected 
that  anything  but  the  utmost  confusion,  in  mind  and 
in  morals,  should  reign  in  matters  of  Sex.  That  we 
should  leave  our  children  to  pick  up  their  information 
about  the  most  sacred,  the  most  profound  and  vital,  of 
all  human  functions,  from  the  mere  gutter,  and  learn 
to  know  it  first  from  the  lips  of  ignorance  and  vice, 
seems  almost  incredible,  and  certainly  indicates  the 
deeply-rooted  unbelief  and  uncleanness  of  our  own 
thoughts.  Yet  a  child  at  the  age  of  puberty,  with  the 
unfolding  of  its  far-down  emotional  and  sexual  na- 
ture, is  eminently  capable  of  the  most  sensitive,  afifec- 
tional,  and  serene  appreciation  of  what  Sex  means 
(generally  more  so,  as  things  are  to-day,  than  its 
w^orldling  parent  or  guardian) ;  and  can  absorb  the 
teaching,  if  sympathetically  given,  without  any  shock 
or  disturbance  to  its  sense  of  shame — that  sense  which 
is  so  natural  and  valuable  a  safeguard  of  early  youth. 
To  teach  the  cliild  first,  quite  openly,  its  physical  rela- 
tion to  its  own  mother,  its  long  indwelling  in  her  body. 


THE    SEX-PASSION  I5 

and  the  deep  and  sacred  bond  of  tenderness  between 
mother  and  child  in  consequence ;  then,  after  a  time,  to 
explain  the  relation  of  fatherhood,  and  how  the  love 
of  the  parents  for  each  other  was  the  cause  of  its  own 
(the  child's)  existence :  these  things  are  easy  and  nat- 
ural— at  least  they  are  so  to  the  young  mind — and  ex- 
cite in  it  no  surprise,  or  sense  of  unfitness,  but  only 
gratitude  and  a  kind  of  tender  wonderment.*  Then, 
later  on,  as  the  special  sexual  needs  and  desires  de- 
velop, to  instruct  the  girl  or  boy  in  the  further  de- 
tails of  the  matter,  and  the  care  and  right  conduct  of 
her  or  his  own  sexual  nature;  on  the  meaning  and 
the  dangers  of  solitary  indulgence — if  this  habit  has 
been  contracted;  on  the  need  of  self-control  and  the 
presence  of  affection  in  all  relations  with  others,  and 
(without  undue  asceticism)  on  the  possibility  of  de- 
flecting physical  desire  to  some  degree  into  afTectional 
and  emotional  channels,  and  the  great  gain  so  result- 
ing; all  these  are  things  which  an  ordinary  youth  of 
either  sex  will  easily  understand  and  appreciate,  and 
which  may  be  of  priceless  value,  saving  such  an  one 
from  years  of  struggle  in  foul  morasses,  and  waste  of 
precious  life-strength.  Finally,  with  the  maturity  of 
the  moral  nature,  the  supremacy  of  the  pure  human 
relation  should  be  taught — not  the  extinguishment 
of  desire,  but  the  attainment  of  the  real  kernel  of  it, 
its  dedication  to  the  well-being  of  another — the  evo- 

*See   "Appendix." 


i6  love's   coming-of-age 

lution  of  the  human  element  in  love,  balancing  the 
natural — till  at  last  the  snatching  of  an  unglad  pleas- 
ure, regardless  of  the  other  from  whom  it  is  snatched, 
or  the  surrender  of  one's  body  to  another  for  any 
reason  except  that  of  love,  become  things  impossible. 

Between  lovers  then  a  kind  of  hardy  temperance 
is  much  to  be  recommended — for  all  reasons,  but  es- 
pecially because  it  lifts  their  satisfaction  and  delight 
in  each  other  out  of  the  region  of  ephemerahties 
(which  too  soon  turn  to  dull  indifference  and  satiety) 
into  the  region  of  more  lasting  things — one  step 
nearer  at  any  rate  to  the  Eternal  Kingdom.  How 
intoxicating  indeed,  how  penetrating — like  a  most 
precious  wine — is  that  love  v/hich  is  the  sexual  trans- 
formed by  the  magic  of  the  will  into  the  emotional  and 
spiritual !  And  what  a  loss  on  the  merest  grounds  of 
prudence  and  the  economy  of  pleasure  is  its  unbridled 
waste  along  physical  channels !  So  nothing  is  so  much 
dreaded  between  lovers  as  just  this — the  vulgarization 
of  love — and  this  is  the  rock  upon  which  marriage  so 
often  splits. 

There  is  a  kind  of  illusion  about  physical  desire 
similar  to  that  which  a  child  suffers  from  when,  see- 
ing a  beautiful  flov/er,  it  instantly  snatches  the  same, 
and  destroys  in  a  few  moments  the  form  and  fragrance 
which  attracted  it.  He  only  gets  the  full  glory  who 
holds  himself  back  a  little,  and  truly  possesses  who  is 
willing  if  need  be  not  to  possess. 


THE    SEX-PASSION  I7 

On  the  other  hand  It  must  not  be  pretended  that 
the  physical  passions  are  by  their  nature  unclean,  or 
otherwise  than  admirable  and  desirable  in  their  place. 
Any  attempt  to  absolutely  disown  or  despite  them, 
carried  out  over  long  periods  either  by  individuals  or 
bodies  of  people,  only  ends  in  the  thinning  out  of  the 
human  nature — by  the  very  consequent  stinting  of  the 
supply  of  its  growth-material,  and  is  liable  to  stultify 
itself  in  time  by  leading  to  reactionary  excesses.  It 
must  never  be  forgotten  that  the  physical  basis 
throughout  life  is  of  the  first  importance,  and  supplies 
the  nutrition  and  food-stuff  without  which  the  higher 
powers  cannot  exist  or  at  least  manifest  themselves. 
Intimacies  founded  on  intellectual  and  moral  affini- 
ties alone  are  seldom  very  deep  and  lasting;  if  the 
physical  basis  in  any  form  is  quite  absent,  the  ac- 
quaintanceship is  liable  to  die  away  again  like  an  ill- 
rooted  plant.  In  many  cases  (especially  of  women) 
the  nature  is  never  really  understood  or  disclosed  till 
the  sex  feeling  is  touched — however  hghtly.  Besides, 
it  must  be  remembered  that  in  order  for  a  perfect  inti- 
macy between  two  people  their  bodies  must  by  the 
nature  of  the  case  be  free  to  each  other.  The  bodily 
intimacy  or  endearment  may  not  be  the  object  for 
which  they  come  together;  but  if  it  is  denied,  its  de- 
nial will  bar  any  real  sense  of  repose  and  affiance,  and 
make  relation  restless,  vague,  tentative  and  unsatis- 
fied. 


i8  love's   coming-of  age 

In  these  lights  it  will  be  seen  that  what  we  call  as- 
ceticism and  what  we  call  libertinism  are  two  sides 
practically  of  the  same  shield.  So  long  as  the  ten- 
dency towards  mere  pleasure-indulgence  is  strong  and 
uncontrolled,  so  long  will  the  instinct  towards  asceti- 
cism assert  itself — and  rightly,  else  we  might  speedily 
find  ourselves  in  headlong  Phaethonian  career.  As- 
ceticism is  in  its  place  (as  the  word  would  indicate)  as 
an  exercise ;  but  let  it  not  be  looked  upon  as  an  end  in 
itself,  for  that  is  a  mistake  of  the  same  kind  as  going 
to  the  opposite  extreme.  Certainly  if  the  welfare  and 
happiness  of  the  beloved  one  were  always  really  the 
main  purpose  in  our  minds  we  should  have  plenty  of 
occasion  for  self-control,  and  an  artificial  asceticism 
would  not  be  needed.  We  look  for  a  time  doubtless 
when  the  hostility  between  these  two  parts  of  man's 
unperfected  nature  will  be  merged  in  the  perfect  love ; 
but  at  present  and  until  this  happens  their  conflict  is 
certainly  one  of  the  most  pregnant  things  in  all  our 
experience;  and  must  not  by  any  means  be  blinked 
or  evaded,  but  boldly  faced.  It  is  in  itself  almost  a 
sexual  act.  The  mortal  nature  through  it  is,  so  to 
speak,  torn  asunder;  and  through  the  rent  so  made 
in  his  mortality  does  it  sometimes  happen  that  a  new 
and  immortal  man  is  born. 

Sex-pleasures  afford  a  kind  of  type  of  all  pleasure. 
The  dissatisfaction  which  at  times  follows  on  them  is 
the  same  as  follows  on  all  pleasure  which  is  sought, 


THE    SEX-PASSION  IQ 

and  which  does  not  come  unsought.  The  dissatisfac- 
tion is  not  in  the  nature  of  pleasure  itself  but  in  the 
nature  of  seeking.  In  going  off  in  pursuit  of  things 
external,  the  'T"  (since  it  really  has  everything  and 
needs  nothing)  deceives  itself,  goes  out  from  its  true 
home,  tears  itself  asunder,  and  admits  a  gap  or  rent 
in  its  own  being.  This,  it  must  be  supposed,  is  what  is 
meant  by  sin — the  separation  or  sundering  of  one's 
being — and  all  the  pain  that  goes  therewith.  It  all 
consists  in  seeking  those  external  things  and  pleas- 
ures ;  not  (a  thousand  times  be  it  said)  in  the  external 
things  or  pleasures  themselves.  They  are  all  fair 
and  gracious  enough ;  their  place  is  to  stand  round 
the  throne  and  offer  their  homage — rank  behind  rank 
in  their  multitudes — if  so  be  we  will  accept  it.  But  for 
us  to  go  out  of  ourselves  to  run  after  them,  to  allow 
ourselves  to  be  divided  and  rent  in  twain  by  their  at- 
traction, that  is  an  inversion  of  the  order  of  heaven. 

To  this  desertion  of  one's  true  self  sex  tempts  most 
strongly,  and  stands  as  the  lype  of  Maya  and  the 
world-illusion;  yet  the  beauty  of  the  loved  one  and 
the  delight  of  corporeal  union  all  turn  to  dust  and 
ashes  if  bought  at  the  price  of  disunion  and  disloyalty 
in  the  higher  spheres — disloyalty  even  to  the  person 
whose  mortal  love  is  sought.  The  higher  and  more 
durable  part  of  man,  whirled  along  in  the  rapids  and 
whirlpools  of  desire,  experiences  tortures  the  moment 
it  comes  to  recognize  that  It  is  something  other  than 


20  love's   coming-of-age 

physical.  Then  comes  the  struggle  to  regain  its  lost 
Paradise,  and  the  frightful  effort  of  co-ordination  be- 
tween the  two  natures,  by  which  the  center  of  con- 
sciousness is  gradually  transferred  from  the  fugitive  to 
the  more  permanent  part,  and  the  mortal  and  change- 
able is  assigned  its  due  place  in  the  outer  chambers 
and  forecourts  of  the  temple. 

Pleasure  should  come  as  the  natural  (and  indeed 
inevitable)  accompaniment  of  life,  believed  in  with  a 
kind  of  free  faith,  but  never  sought  as  the  object  of 
life.  It  is  in  the  inversion  of  this  order  that  the  un- 
cleanness  of  the  senses  arises.  Sex  to-day  through- 
out the  domains  of  civilization  is  thoroughly  unclean. 
Everywhere  it  is  slimed  over  with  the  thought  of 
pleasure.  Not  for  joy,  not  for  mere  delight  in  and  ex- 
cess of  life,  not  for  pride  in  the  generation  of  children, 
not  for  a  symbol  and  expression  of  deepest  soul-union, 
does  it  exist — but  for  our  own  gratification.  Hence 
we  disown  it  in  our  thoughts,  and  cover  it  up  with 
false  shame  and  unbelief — knowing  well  that  to  seek  a 
social  act  for  a  private  end  is  a  falsehood.  The  body 
itself  is  kept  religiously  covered,  smothered  away 
from  the  rush  of  the  great  purifying  life  of  Nature, 
infected  with  dirt  and  disease,  and  a  subject  for  pru- 
rient thought  and  exaggerated  lust  such  as  in  its 
naked  state  it  would  never  provoke.  The  skin  be- 
comes sickly  and  corrupt,  and  of  a  dead  leaden  white 
hue,  which  strangely  enough  is  supposed  to  be  more 


THE    SEX  PASSION  21 

beautiful  than  the  rich  rose-brown,  deHcately  shaded 
into  Hghter  tints  in  the  less  exposed  parts,  which  it 
would  wear  if  tanned  by  daily  welcome  of  sun  and 
wind.  Sexual  embraces  themselves  seldom  receive  the 
benison  of  Dame  Nature,  in  whose  presence  alone, 
under  the  burning  sun  or  the  high  canopy  of  the  stars 
and  surrounded  by  the  fragrant  atmosphere,  their 
meaning  can  be  fully  understood:  but  take  place  in 
stufify  dens  of  dirty  upholstery  and  are  associated  with 
all  unbeautiful  things. 

Even  literature,  which  might  have  been  expected 
to  preserve  some  decent  expression  on  this  topic,  re- 
flects all  too  clearly  by  its  silence  or  by  its  pruriency 
the  prevailing  spirit  of  unbelief;  and  in  order  to  find 
any  sane  faithful  strong  and  calm  words  on  the  sub- 
ject, one  has  to  wade  right  back  through  the  marshes 
and  bogs  of  civilized  scribbledom,  and  toil  eastward 
across  its  arid  wastes  to  the  very  dawn-hymns  of  the 
Aryan  races. 

In  one  of  the  Upanishads  of  the  Vedic  sacred 
books  (the  Brihadaranyaka  Upanishad)  there  is  a 
fine  passage  in  which  instruction  is  given  to  the  man 
who  desires  a  noble  son  as  to  the  prayers  which  he 
shall  offer  to  the  gods  on  the  occasion  of  congress 
with  his  wife.  In  primitive,  simple  and  serene  lan- 
guage it  directs  him  how,  at  such  times,  he  should 
pray  to  the  various  forms  of  deity  who  preside  over 
the  operations  of  Nature:  to  Vishnu  to  prepare  the 


22  love's     COMING-OF-AGE 

womb  of  the  future  mother,  to  Prajapati  to  watch  over 
the  influx  of  the  semen,  and  to  the  other  gods  to  nour- 
ish the  foetus,  etc.  Nothing  could  be  (I  am  judging 
from  the  only  translation  I  have  met  with,  a  Latin 
one)  more  composed,  serene,  simple,  and  religious  in 
feeling,  and  well  might  it  be  if  such  instructions  were 
preserved  and  followed,  even  to-day;  yet  such  is  the 
pass  we  have  come  to  that  actually  Max  MuUer  in 
his  translations  of  the  Sacred  Books  of  the  East  ap- 
pears to  have  been  unable  to  persuade  himself  to  ren- 
der these  and  a  few  other  quite  similar  passages  into 
English,  but  gives  them  in  the  original  Sanskrit !  One 
might  have  thought  that  as  Professor  in  the  Univer- 
sity of  Oxford,  presumably  sans  peur  et  sans  reproche, 
and  professedly  engaged  in  making  a  translation  of 
these  books  for  students,  it  was  his  duty  and  it  might 
have  been  his  delight  to  make  intelligible  just  such 
passages  as  these,  which  give  the  pure  and  pious  sen- 
timent of  the  early  world  in  so  perfect  a  form ;  unless 
indeed  he  thought  the  sentiment  impure  and  impious 
— in  which  case  we  have  indeed  a  measure  of  the 
degradation  of  the  public  opinion  which  must  have 
swayed  his  mind.  As  to  the  only  German  translation 
of  the  Upanishad  which  I  can  find,  it  balks  at  the 
same  passages  in  the  same  feeble  way — repeating 
nicht  wiederzugeben,  nicht  wiederzugeben,  over  and 
over  again,  till  at  last  one  can  but  conclude  that  the 
translator  is  right,  and  that  the  simplicity  and  sacred- 


THE    SEX-PASSION  2$ 

ness  of  the  feeling  is  in  this  our  time  indeed  *'not  to 
be  reproduced." 

Our  public  opinion,  our  literature,  our  customs, 
our  laws,  are  saturated  with  the  notion  of  the  unclean- 
ness  of  Sex,  and  are  so  making  the  conditions  of  its 
cleanness  more  and  more  difficult.  Our  children,  as 
said,  have  to  pick  up  their  intelligence  on  the  subject 
in  the  gutter.  Little  boys  bathing  on  the  outskirts 
of  our  towns  are  hunted  down  by  idiotic  policemen, 
apparently  infuriated  by  the  sight  of  the  naked  body, 
even  of  childhood.  Lately  in  one  of  our  northern 
towns,  the  boys  and  men  bathing  in  a  public  pool  set 
apart  by  the  corporation  for  the  purpose,  were — 
though  forced  to  wear  some  kind  of  covering — kept 
till  nine  o'clock  at  night  before  they  were  allowed  to 
go  into  the  water — lest  in  the  full  daylight  Mrs. 
Grundy  should  behold  any  portion  of  their  bodies! 
and  as  for  women  and  girls,  their  disabilities  in  the 
matter  are  most  serious. 

Till  this  dirty  and  dismal  sentiment  with  regard 
to  the  human  body  is  removed  there  can  be  little  hope 
of  anything  like  a  free  and  gracious  public  hfe.  With 
the  regeneration  of  our  social  ideas  the  w^hole  concep- 
tion of  Sex  as  a  thing  covert  and  to  be  ashamed  of, 
marketable  and  unclean,  wall  have  to  be  regenerated. 
That  inestimable  freedom  and  pride  which  is  the  basis 
of  all  true  manhood  and  womanhood  will  have  to  enter 
into  this  most  intimate  relation  to  preserve  it  frank 


24  love's   coming-of-age 

and  pure — pure  from  the  damnable  commercialism 
which  buys  and  sells  all  human  things,  and  from  the 
religious  hypocrisy  which  covers  and  conceals ;  and  a 
healthy  delight  in  and  cultivation  of  the  body  and  all 
its  natural  functions,  and  a  determination  to  keep 
them  pure  and  beautiful,  open  and  sane  and  free,  will 
have  to  become  a  recognized  part  of  national  life. 

Possibly,  and  indeed  probably,  as  the  sentiment  of 
common  life  and  common  interest  grows,  and  the 
capacity  for  true  companionship  increases  with  the 
decrease  of  self-regarding  anxiety,  the  importance  of 
the  mere  sex-act  will  dwindle  till  it  comes  to  be  re- 
garded as  only  one  very  specialized  factor  in  the  full 
total  of  human  love.  There  is  no  doubt  that  w4th  the 
full  realization  of  afifectional  union  the  need  of  actual 
bodily  congress  loses  some  of  its  urgency;  and  it  is 
not  difBcult  to  see  in  our  present-day  social  life  that 
the  want  of  the  former  is  (according  to  the  law  of 
transmutation)  one  marked  cause  of  the  violence  and 
extravagance  of  the  lower  passions.  But  however 
things  may  change  with  the  further  evolution  of  man, 
there  is  no  doubt  that  first  of  all  the  sex-relation  must 
be  divested  of  the  sentiment  of  uncleanness  which  sur- 
rounds it,  and  rehabilitated  again  with  a  sense  almost 
of  religious  consecration;  and  this  means,  as  I  have 
said,  a  free  people,  proud  in  the  mastery  and  the  divin- 
ity of  their  own  lives,  and  in  the  beauty  and  openness 
of  their  own  bodies.* 

*See    "Appendix." 


THE    SEX-PASSION  2$ 

Sex  is  the  allegory  of  Love  in  the  physical  world. 
It  is  from  this  fact  that  it  derives  its  immense  power. 
The  aim  of  Love  is  non-differentiation — absolute 
union  of  being ;  but  absolute  union  can  only  be  found 
at  the  center  of  existence.  Therefore  whoever  has 
truly  found  another  has  found  not  only  that  other, 
and  with  that  other  himself,  but  has  found  also  a 
third — who  dwells  at  the  center  and  holds  the  plastic 
material  of  the  universe  in  the  palm  of  his  hand,  and 
is  a  creator  of  sensible  forms. 

Similarly  the  aim  of  sex  is  union  and  non-differen- 
tiation— but  on  the  physical  plane, — and  in  the  mo- 
ment when  this  union  is  accomplished  creation  takes 
place,  and  the  generation  (in  the  plastic  material  of 
the  sex-elements)  of  sensible  forms. 

In  the  animal  and  lower  human  world — and  wher- 
ever the  creature  is  incapable  of  realizing  the  perfect 
love  (which  is  indeed  able  to  transform  it  into  a  god) — 
Nature  in  the  purely  physical  instincts  does  the  next 
best  thing,  that  is,  she  effects  a  corporeal  union  and 
so  generates  another  creature  who  by  the  very  process 
of  his  generation  shall  be  one  step  nearer  to  the  uni- 
versal soul  and  the  realization  of  the  desired  end. 
Nevertheless  the  moment  the  other  love  and  all  that 
goes  with  it  is  realized  the  natural  sexual  love  has 
to  fall  into  a  secondary  place — the  lover  must  stand 
on  his  feet  and  not  on  his  head — or  else  the  most  dire 
confusions  ensue,  and  torments  aeonian. 


26  love's   coming-of-age 

Taking  all  together  I  think  it  may  fairly  be  said 
that  the  prime  object  of  Sex  is  union,  the  physical 
union  as  the  allegory  and  expression  of  the  real 
union,  and  that  generation  is  a  secondary  object  or 
result  of  this  union.  If  we  go  to  the  lowest  material 
expressions  of  Sex — as  among  the  protozoic  cells — we 
find  that  they,  the  cells,  unite  together,  two  into  one ; 
and  that,  as  a  result  of  the  nutrition  that  ensues,  this 
joint  cell  after  a  time  (but  not  always)  breaks  up  by 
fission  into  a  number  of  progeny  cells ;  or  if  on  the 
other  hand  we  go  to  the  very  highest  expression  of 
Sex,  in  the  sentiment  of  Love,  we  find  the  latter 
takes  the  form  chiefly  and  before  all  else  of  a  desire 
for  union,  and  only  in  lesser  degree  of  a  desire  for 
race-propagation.* 

I  mention  this  because  it  probably  makes  a  good 
deal  of  difiference  in  our  estimate  of  Sex  whether  the 
one  function  or  the  other  is  considered  primary. 
There  is  perhaps  a  slight  tendency  among  medical 
and  other  authorities  to  overlook  the  question  of  the 
important  physical  actions  and  reactions,  and  even 
corporeal  modifications,  which  may  ensue  upon  sexual 
intercourse  between  two  people,  and  to  fix  their  atten- 
tion too  exclusively  upon  their  child-bearing   func- 

*TakIng  union  as  the  main  point  we  may  look  upon  the  idealized 
Sex-love  as  a  sense  of  contact  pervading  the  whole  mind  and  bodv— 
while  the  sex-organs  are  a  specialization  of  this  faculty  of  union 
in  the  outermost  sphere:  union  in  the  bodily  sphere  giving  rise  to 
bodily  generation,  the  same  as  union  in  the  mental  and  emotional 
spheres  occasions  generation  of  another  kind. 


THE    SEX-PASSION  27 

tion ;  but  in  truth  it  is  probable,  I  think,  from  various 
considerations,*  that  the  spermatozoa  pass  through 
the  tissues  and  affect  the  general  body  of  the  female, 
as  well  as  that  the  male  absorbs  minutest  cells  from 
the  female ;  and  that  generally,  even  without  the  actual 
Sex-act,  there  is  an  interchange  of  vital  and  ethereal 
elements — so  that  it  might  be  said  there  is  a  kind  of 
generation  taking  place  within  each  of  the  persons 
concerned,  through  their  mutual  influence  on  each 
other,  as  well  as  that  more  specialized  generation 
which  consists  in  the  propagation  of  the  race. 

At  the  last  and  taking  it  as  a  whole  one  has  the 
same  difBculty  in  dealing  with  the  subject  of  Love 
which  meets  one  at  every  turn  in  modern  Hfe — the 
monstrous  separation  of  one  part  of  our  nature  from 
another — the  way  in  which,  no  doubt  in  the  neces- 
sary course  of  evolution,  we  have  cut  ourselves  in 
twain  as  it  were,  and  assigned  "right"  and  "wrong," 
heaven  and  hell,  spiritual  and  material,  and  other  vio- 
lent distinctions,  to  the  separate  portions.  We  have 
eaten  of  the  Tree  of  Knowledge  of  good  and  evil  with 
a  vengeance !  The  Lord  has  indeed  driven  us  out  of 
Paradise  into  the  domain  of  that  "fabro  vulcano"  who 
with  tremendous  hammer-strokes  must  hammer  the 


♦These  are  (1)  the  curious,  not  yet  explained,  facts  of  "Telegony" 
— 1.  e.,  the  tendency  (often  noticed  in  animals)  of  the  children  of 
a  dam  by  a  second  sire  to  resemble  the  first  sire;  (2)  the  probable 
survival,  in  a  modified  form,  of  the  primitive  close  relation  (as  seen 
In  the  protozoa)  between  copulation  and  nutrition;  (3)  the  great 
activity  of  the  spermatozoa  themselves. 


28  love's    coming-of-age 

knowledge  of  good  and  evil  out  of  us  again.  I  feel 
that  I  owe  an  apology  to  the  beautiful  god  for  daring 
even  for  a  moment  to  think  of  dissecting  him  soul 
from  body,  and  for  speaking  as  if  these  artificial  dis- 
tinctions were  in  any  wise  eternal.  Will  the  man  or 
woman,  or  race  of  men  and  women,  never  come,  to 
whom  love  in  its  various  manifestations  shall  be  from 
the  beginning  a  perfect  whole,  pure  and  natural,  free 
and  standing  sanely  on  its  feet? 


MAN 

THE  UNCROWN 


A/\  AN,  the  ordinary  human  male,  is  a  curious  ani- 
mal. While  mastering  the  world  with  his  pluck, 
skill,  enterprise,  he  is  in  matters  of  Love  for  the 
most  part  a  child.  The  passion  plays  havoc  with  him  ; 
nor  does  he  ride  the  Lion,  as  Ariadne  is  fabled  to 
have  done. 

In  this  he  differs  from  the  other  sex;  and  the 
aifiference  can  be  seen  in  earliest  years.  When  the 
boy  is  on  his  rocking  horse,  the  girl  is  caressing  her 
doll.  When  the  adolescent  youth,  burning  to  master 
a  real  quadruped,  is  still  somewhat  contemptuous  of 
Love's  power,  ''sweet  seventeen"  has  already  lost  and 
regained  her  heart  several  times,  and  is  accomplished 
in  all  the  finesse  of  feeling. 

To  the  grown  man  love  remains  little  more  than 
a  plaything.  Affairs,  politics,  fighting,  moneymaking, 
creative  art,  constructive  industry,  are  his  serious  busi- 
ness ;  the  affections  are  his  relaxation ;  passion  is  the 
little  fire  with  which  he  toys,  and  which  every  now 
and  then  flares  out  and  burns  him  up.     His  affections, 


30  LOVE  S    COMING-OF-AGE 

his  passions,  are  probably  as  a  rule  stronger  than 
woman's ;  but  he  never  attains  to  understand  them 
or  be  master  of  their  craft.  With  woman  all  this  is 
reversed. 

A  man  pelts  along  on  his  hobby — his  business,  his 
career,  his  latest  invention,  or  what  not — forgetful 
that  there  is  such  a  thing  in  the  world  as  the  human 
heart ;  then  all  of  a  sudden  he  ''falls  in  love,"  tumbles 
headlong  in  the  most  ludicrous  way,  fills  the  air  with 
his  cries,  struggles  frantically  Hke  a  fly  in  treacle :  and 
all  the  time  hasn't  the  faintest  idea  whether  he  has 
been  inveigled  into  the  situation,  or  whether  he  got 
there  of  his  own  accord,  or  what  he  wants  now  he  is 
there.  Suicides,  broken  hearts,  lamentations,  and  cer- 
tainly a  whole  panorama,  marvellous  in  beauty,  of 
lyrical  poetry  and  art,  mark  the  experience  of 
love's  distress  in  Man.  Woman  in  the  same  plight 
neither  howls  nor  cries,  she  does  not  commit  suicide 
or  do  anything  extravagant,  she  creates  not  a  single 
poem  or  work  of  art  of  any  account;  but  she  simply 
goes  her  way  and  suffers  in  silence,  shaping  her  life 
to  the  new  conditions.  Never  for  a  moment  does  she 
forget  that  her  one  serious  object  is  Love ;  but  never 
for  a  moment  does  she  "give  herself  away"  or  lose  her 
head,  in  the  pursuit  of  that  object. 

It  is  perhaps  in  a  kind  of  revenge  for  this  that 
man  for  so  many  centuries  has  made  woman  his 
serf.    Feeling  that  she  really  somehow  mastered  him 


MAN    THE    UNCROWN  3I 

on  the  affectional  plane,  he  in  revenge  on  the  physical 
plane  has  made  the  most  of  his  superior  strength,  and 
of  his  power  over  her;  or,  more  probably,  not  thinking 
about  it  at  all,  he  has  simply  allowed  all  along  the 
sex-passion  (so  strong  in  him)  to  prompt  him  to  this 
mastery. 

For  the  sex-passion  in  man  is  undoubtedly  a 
force — huge  and  fateful — which  has  to  be  reckoned 
with.  Perhaps  (speaking  broadly)  all  the  passions  and 
powers,  the  intellect  and  afifections  and  emotions  and 
all,  are  really  profounder  and  vaster  in  Man  than  in 
Woman — are  more  varied,  root  deeper,  and  have  wider 
scope ;  but  then  the  woman  has  this  advantage,  that 
her  powers  are  more  co-ordinated,  are  in  harmony 
with  each  other,  where  his  are  disjointed  or  in  con- 
flict. A  girl  comes  of  age  sooner  than  a  boy.  And 
the  coming-of-age  of  Love  (which  harmonizes  all  the 
faculties  in  the  human  being)  may  take  place  early  in 
the  woman,  while  in  the  man  it  is  delayed  long  and 
long,  perhaps  never  completely  eflfected.  The  problem 
is  so  much  bigger,  so  much  more  complex,  with  him ; 
it  takes  longer  for  its  solution.  Women  are  sometimes 
impatient  with  men  on  this  score ;  but  then  they  do 
not  see,  judging  from  their  own  little  flock,  what  a  big 
herd  of  cattle  the  man  has  to  bring  home. 

Anyhow,  the  point  is  that  Man  with  his  great  unco- 
ordinated nature  has  during  these  later  centuries  dom- 
inated the  other  sex,  and  made  himself  the  ruler  of 


32 

society.  In  consequence  of  which  we  naturally  have  a 
society  made  after  his  pattern — a  society  advanced  in 
mechanical  and  intellectual  invention,  with  huge  pas- 
sional and  emotional  elements,  but  all  involved  in 
w^hirling  confusion  and  strife — a  society  ungrown, 
which  on  its  material  side  may  approve  itself  a  great 
success,  but  on  its  more  human  and  affectional  side 
seems  at  times  an  utter  failure. 

This  ungrown,  half-baked  sort  of  character  is  con- 
spicuous in  the  class  of  men  who  organize  the  modern 
world — the  men  of  the  English-speaking  well-to-do 
class.  The  boy  of  this  class  begins  life  at  a  public 
school.  He  does  not  learn  much  from  the  masters ; 
but  he  knocks  about  among  his  fellows  in  cricket  and 
football  and  athletics,  and  turns  out  with  an  excellent 
organizing  capacity  and  a  tolerably  firm  and  reliable 
grip  on  the  practical  and  material  side  of  life — quali- 
ties which  are  of  first-rate  importance,  and  which  give 
the  EngHsh  ruling  classes  a  similar  mission  in  the 
world  to  the  Romans  of  the  early  Empire.  A  certain 
standard  too  (for  what  it  is  worth)  of  schoolboy  honor 
and  fairness  is  thumped  into  him.  It  is  very  narrow 
and  conventional,  but  at  its  best  rises  as  high  as  a 
conception  of  self-sacrifice  and  duty,  though  never  to 
the  conception  of  love.  At  the  same  time  a  strong 
and  lavish  diet  and  an  easy  life  stimulate  his  func- 
tional energies  and  his  animal  passions  to  a  high  de- 
gree. 


MAN    THE    UNGROWN  33 

Here  certainly  is  some  splendid  material,  and  if 
well  pounded  into  shape,  kneaded  and  baked,  might 
result  in  a  useful  upper  crust  for  society.  But  alas ! 
it  remains,  or  actually  degenerates  into,  a  most  fatu- 
ous dough.  The  boy  never  learns  anything  after  he 
leaves  school.  He  gets  no  more  thumps.  He  glides 
easily  into  the  higher  walks  of  the  world — backed  by 
his  parents'  money — into  Law  or  Army  or  Church  or 
Civil  Service  or  Commerce.  He  has  really  no  serious 
fights  to  fight,  or  efforts  to  make,  sees  next  to  nothing 
of  actual  life ;  has  an  easy  time,  can  marry  pretty  well 
whom  he  chooses,  or  console  himself  with  unmarried 
joys ;  and  ultimately  settles  dow^n  into  the  routine  and 
convention  of  his  particular  profession — a  picture  of 
beefy  self-satisfaction.  Affection  and  tenderness  ol 
feeling,  though  latent  in  him,  have  never,  owing  to  the 
unfortunate  conditions  of  his  life,  been  developed ;  but 
their  place  begins  to  be  taken  by  a  rather  dreary 
cynicism.  Sex,  always  strong,  still  even  now  in  its 
waning  days,  retains  the  first  place;  and  the  mature 
man,  having  no  adequate  counterpoise  to  it  in  the 
growth  of  his  sympathetic  nature,  is  fain  to  find  his 
highest  restraints  or  sanctions  in  the  unripe  code  of 
his  school-days  or  the  otiose  conventions  and  preju- 
dices of  the  professional  clique  to  which  he  belongs. 

So  it  comes  about  that  the  men  who  have  the 
sway  of  the  world  to-day  are  in  the  most  important 
matters  quite  ungrown ;  they  really  have  never  come 


34  LOVES  COM ING-OF-AGE 

of  age  in  any  adequate  sense.  Like  Ephraim  they  are 
''a  cake  not  turned."  Wherever  they  turn  up^:  in 
Lords  or  Commons,  Civil  or  MiHtary,  Law  or  Church 
or  Medicine,  the  Judge  on  the  bench,  the  Bishop,  the 
ruler  of  India,  the  exploiter  of  South  Africa,  the  man 
who  booms  a  company  in  the  city,  or  who  builds  up  a 
great  commercial  trust  and  gets  a  title  for  supporting 
a  Government :  it  is  much  the  same.  Remove  the  dis- 
tinctive insignia  of  their  clique  and  office,  and  you 
find  underneath — no  more  than  a  public  school-boy. 
Perhaps,  indeed,  rather  less ;  for  while  the  school-boy 
mind  is  there,  and  the  school-boy  code  of  life  and 
honor,  the  enthusiasm  and  the  promise  of  youth  are 
gone. 

It  is  certainly  very  maddening  at  times  to  think 
that  the  Destinities  of  the  world,  the  organization  of 
society,  the  wonderful  scope  of  possible  statesman- 
ship, the  mighty  issues  of  trade  and  industry,  the 
loves  of  Women,  the  lives  of  criminals,  the  fate  of 
savage  nations,  should  be  in  the  hands  of  such  a  set 
of  general  nincompoops ;  men  so  fatuous  that  it 
actually  does  not  hurt  them  to  see  the  streets 
crammed  with  prostitutes  by  night,  or  the  parks  by 
day  with  the  semi-lifeless  bodies  of  tramps ;  men,  to 
whom  it  seems  quite  natural  that  our  marriage  and 
social  institutions  should  lumber  along  over  ike  bodies 
of  women,  as  our  commercial  institutions  grind  over 
the  bodies  of  the  poor,  and  our  "imperial"  enterprise 


MAN    THE    UNCROWN  35 

over  the  bodies  of  barbarian  races,  destroyed  by  drink 
and  deviltry.  But  then  no  doubt  the  world  is  made 
like  that.  Assuredly  it  is  no  wonder  that  the  more 
go-ahead  Women  (who  have  come  round  to  the  light 
by  their  own  way,  and  through  much  darkness  and 
suffering)  should  rise  in  revolt ;  or  that  the  Workmen 
(finding  their  lives  in  the  hands  of  those  who  do  not 
know  what  life  is)  should  do  the  same. 

Leaving  now  the  Middle-class  man  of  to-day,  the 
great  representative  of  modern  civilization,  and  the 
triumphant  outcome  of  so  many  centuries  of  human 
progress,  to  enjoy  his  distinctions — we  may  turn  for 
a  moment  to  the  only  other  great  body  of  men  who 
are  of  any  importance :  the  more  capable  and  energetic 
manual  workers. 

In  the  man  of  this  class  we  have  a  type  superior 
in  many  ways  to  the  other.  In  the  first  place  he 
knows  something  of  what  Life  is ;  from  an  early  age 
probably  he  has  had  to  do  something  towards  his  own 
living.  Anyhow  he  has  been  called  upon  in  a  thous- 
and ways  to  help  his  parents,  or  his  brothers  and 
sisters,  and  has  developed  a  fair  capacity  of  sympathy 
and  affection — a  thing  which  can  hardly  be  said  of  the 
public  school  boy;  while  his  work,  narrow  though  it 
may  be,  has  given  him  a  certain  definite  ability  and 
grasp  of  actual  fact.  If,  as  is  now  happening  in  hun- 
dreds of  thousands  of  cases,  there  is  superadded  to 
all  this  some  of  the  general  culture  which  arises  from 


36  love's  coming-of-age 

active  reading  and  study,  it  is  clear  that  the  resuh  is 
going  to  be  considerable.  It  may  not  count  much 
to-day,  but  it  will  to-morrow. 

On  the  other  hand  this  class  is  lamentably  wanting 
in  the  very  point  where  the  other  man  excels — the 
organizing  faculty.  Take  a  workman  from  the  bench, 
where  he  has  never  so  to  speak  had  to  look  beyond 
his  nose,  and  place  him  in  a  position  of  responsibility 
and  command,  and  he  is  completely  at  sea.  He  turns 
out  hopelessly  slattern  and  ineffectual,  or  a  martinet  or 
a  bully;  he  has  no  sense  of  perspective  and  stickles 
absurdly  over  little  points  while  he  lets  the  great  ones 
go ;  and  it  is  almost  impossible  for  him  to  look  before 
and  after  as  he  should  do,  or  bring  to  a  proper  focus 
a  whole  field  of  considerations.  In  all  this  he  is  a 
mere  child :  and  evidently  by  himself  unfit  to  rule  the 
world. 

In  many  respects  the  newer  Women  and  the 
Workmen  resemble  each  other.  Both  have  been 
bullied  and  sat  upon  from  time  immemorial,  and  are 
beginning  to  revolt ;  both  are  good  at  detailed  and  set 
or  customary  work,  both  are  bad  at  organization ;  both 
are  stronger  on  the  emotional  than  on  the  intellectual 
side;  and  both  have  an  ideal  of  better  things,  but  do 
not  quite  see  their  way  to  carry  it  out.  Their  best 
hope  perhaps  lies  in  their  both  getting  hold  of  the 
Middle-class  Man  and  thumping  him  on  each  side  till 
they  get  him  to  organize  the  world  for  them.    The  lat- 


MAN    THE    UNCROWN  37 

ter  has  no  ideal,  no  object,  no  enthusiasm,  of  his  own. 
He  cannot  set  himself  to  work ;  and  consequently  he  is 
just  made  use  of  by  the  commercial  spirit  of  the  day. 
.It  is  really  lamentable  to  think  how  this  great  organ- 
izing capacity — which  might  create  a  holy  Human 
empire  of  the  world — is  simply  at  present  the  tool  ol 
the  Jew  and  the  Speculator.  In  Parliamentary,  Mili- 
tary, Indian,  Home  or  Colonial  politics,  the  quondam 
public  school-boy  is  just  led  by  the  nose  by  the 
money-grubbing  interest,  to  serve  its  purposes ;  and 
half  the  time  has  not  the  sense  to  see  that  he  is  being 
so  led. 

It  might  seem  that  it  would  be  the  greatest  bless- 
ing and  benefit  to  the  man  of  this  class  to  find  him 
an  ideal  to  work  to.  Certainly  it  is  his  only  real  and 
conceivable  function  to  form  an  alliance  with  the 
two  other  great  classes  of  the  modern  nations — the 
women  and  the  workmen — and  organize  for  them. 
Whether  he  will  see  it  so,  we  know  not ;  but  if  this 
might  come  about  great  things  would  happen  in  the 
world. 


WOMAN 

THE  SERF 


A  HALF-GROWN  man  is  of  course  a  tyrant.  And 
so  it  has  come  about  that  the  rule  of  Man  in  the 
world  has  for  many  ages  meant  the  serfdom  of 
Woman. 

■  Far  back  in  History,  at  a  time  when  in  the  early 
societies  the  thought  of  inequality  had  hardly  arisen, 
it  would  appear  that  the  female  in  her  own  way — as 
sole  authenticator  of  birth  and  parentage,  as  guardian 
of  the  household,  as  inventress  of  agriculture  and  the 
peaceful  arts,  as  priestess  or  prophetess  or  sharer  in 
the  councils  of  the  tribe — was  as  powerful  as  man 
in  his,  and  sometimes  even  more  so.  But  from  thence, 
down  to  to-day,  what  centuries  of  repression,  of  slave- 
hood,  of  dumbness  and  obscurity  have  been  her  lot ! 

There  is  much  to  show  that  the  greed  of  Private 
Property  was  the  old  Serpent  which  brought  about  the 
fall  of  our  first  parents  ;  for  as  this  sentiment — the  chief 
incentive  to  modern  Civilization — rose  and  spread  with 
a  kind  of  contagion  over  the  advancing  races  of  man- 
kind, the  human  Male,  bitten  by  it,  not  only  claimed 
posession  of  everything  he  could  lay  hands  upon,  but 


WOMAN    THE    SERF  39 

ended  by  enslaving  and  appropriating  his  own  mate, 
his  second  self — reducing  her  also  to  a  mere  chattel,  a 
slave  and  a  plaything. 

Certainly  it  is  curious  that,  with  whatever  occa- 
sional exceptions,  the  periods  of  man's  ascendancy 
have  been  the  periods  of  so  much  sadness  and  degra- 
dation of  women.  He,  all  through,  more  and  more 
calmly  assuming  that  it  must  be  her  province  to  live 
and  work  for  him ;  shutting  her  more  and  more  into 
the  seclusion  of  the  boudoir  and  the  harem,  or  down 
to  the  drudgery  of  the  hearth ;  confining  her  body,  her 
mind ;  playing  always  upon  her  sex-nature,  accentuat- 
ing always  that — as  though  she  were  indeed  nought 
else  but  sex;  yet  furious  if  her  feelings  were  not 
always  obedient  to  his  desire ;  arrogating  to  himself  a 
masculine  license,  yet  revenging  the  least  unfaithful- 
ness on  her  part  by  casting  her  out  into  the  scorned 
life  of  the  prostitute ;  and  granting  her  more  and  more 
but  one  choice  in  life — to  be  a  free  woman,  and  to 
die,  unsexed,  in  the  gutter;  or  for  creature-comforts 
and  a  good  name  to  sell  herself,  soul  and  body,  into 
life-long  bondage.  While  she,  more  and  more,  has 
accepted  as  inevitable  the  situation ;  and  moved,  sad- 
eyed,  to  her  patient  and  uncomplaining  work,  to  the 
narrow  sphere  and  petty  details  of  household  labor  and 
life,  of  patience  and  self-efifacement,  of  tenderness  and 
love,  little  noticed  and  less  understood ;  or  twisted 
herself  into  a  ridiculous  mime  of  fashion  and  frivolity. 


40  love's  coming- of- age 

if  so  she  might  find  a  use  for  her  empty  head,  and 
some  favor  with  her  lord;  her  own  real  impulses  and 
character,  her  own  talents  and  genius,  all  the  while 
smothered  away  and  blighted,  her  brain  dwarfed,  and 
her  outlook  on  the  world  marred  by  falsity  and  igno- 
rance. 

Such,  or  something  like  it,  has  been  the  fate  of 
woman  through  the  centuries.  And  if,  like  man,  she 
had  been  light-armed  for  her  own  defense,  it  might 
have  been  possible  to  say  it  was  her  own  fault  that 
she  allowed  all  this  to  take  place ;  but  when  we  re- 
member that  she  all  the  while  has  had  to  bear  the 
great  and  speechless  burden  of  Sex — to  be  herself  the 
ark  and  cradle  of  the  Race  down  the  ages — then  we 
may  perhaps  understand  what  a  tragedy  it  has  all 
been.  For  the  fulfilment  of  sex  is  a  relief  and  a  con- 
densation to  the  Man.  He  goes  his  way,  and,  so  to 
speak,  thinks  no  more  about  it.  But  to  the  Woman  it 
is  the  culmination  of  her  life,  her  profound  and  secret 
mission  to  humanity,  of  incomparable  import  and 
delicacy. 

It  is  difificult,  of  course,  for  men  to  understand 
the  depth  and  sacredness  of  the  mother-feeling  in 
woman — its  joys  and  hope,  its  leaden  weight  of  cares 
and  anxieties.  The  burden  of  pregnancy  and  gesta- 
tion, the  deep  inner  solicitude  and  despondency,  the 
fears  that  all  may  not  be  well,  the  indrawing  and 
absorption  of  her  life  into  the  life  of  the  child,  the 


WOMAN    THE    SERF  41 

increasing  effort  to  attend  to  anything  else,  to  care 
for  anything  else;  her  willingness  even  to  die  if  only 
the  child  may  be  born  safe:  these  are  things  which 
man — except  it  be  occasionally  in  his  role  as  artist  or 
inventor — does  but  faintly  imagine.  Then,  later  on, 
the  dedication  to  the  young  life  or  lives,  the  years  of 
daylong  and  nightlong  labor  and  forethought,  in  which 
the  very  thought  of  self  is  effaced,  of  tender  service 
for  which  there  is  no  recognition,  nor  ever  will  or  can 
be — except  in  the  far  future ;  the  sacrifice  of  personal 
interests  and  expansions  in  the  ever-narrowing  round 
of  domestic  duty ;  and  in  the  end  the  sad  wonderment 
and  grievous  unfulfilled  yearning  as  one  by  one  the 
growing  boy  and  girl  push  their  way  into  the  world 
and  disavow  their  home-ties  and  dependence ;  the  sun- 
dering of  heart-strings  even  as  the  navel-cord  had  to 
be  sundered  before :  for  these  things,  too.  Woman  can 
hope  but  little  sympathy  and  understanding  from  the 
other  sex. 

But  this  fact,  of  man's  non-perception  of  it,  does 
not  make  the  tragedy  less.  Far  back  out  of  the 
brows  of  Greek  goddess,  and  Sibyll,  and  Norse  and 
German  seeress  and  prophetess,  over  all  this  petty 
civilization  look  the  grand  untamed  eyes  of  a  primal 
woman  the  equal  and  the  mate  of  man ;  and  in  sad 
plight  should  we  be  if  we  might  not  already,  lighting 
up  the  horizon  from  East  and  West  and  South  and 
North,   discern   the   answering  looks    of    those    new 


42 

comers  who,  as  the  period  of  women's  enslavement 
is  passing  away,  send  glances  of  recognition  across 
the  ages  to  their  elder  sisters. 

After  all,  and  underneath  all  the  falsities  of  this 
period,  may  we  not  say  that  there  is  a  deep  and  per- 
manent relation  between  the  sexes,  which  must  inev- 
itably assert  itself  again  ? 

To  this  relation  the  physiological  differences  per- 
haps afford  the  key.  In  woman — modern  science  has 
shown — the  more  fundamental  and  primitive  nervous 
centers,  and  the  great  sympathetic  and  vaso-motor 
system  of  nerves  generally,  are  developed  to  a  greater 
extent  than  in  man;  in  woman  the  whole  structure 
and  life  rallies  more  closely  and  obviously  round  the 
sexual  function  than  in  man ;  and,  as  a  general  rule,  in 
the  evolution  of  the  human  race,  as  well  as  of  the 
lower  races,  the  female  is  less  subject  to  variation  and 
is  more  constant  to  and  conservative  of  the  type  of  the 
race  than  the  male.*  With  these  physiological  dif- 
ferences are  naturally  allied  the  facts  that,  of  the  two. 
Woman  is  the  more  primitive,  the  more  intuitive,  the 
more  emotional.  If  not  so  large  and  cosmic  in  her 
scope,  the  great  unconscious  processes  of  Nature  lie 
somehow  nearer  to  her;  to  her,  sex  is  a  deep  and 
sacred  instinct,  carrying  with  it  a  sense  of  natural 
purity;  nor  does  she  often  experience  that  divorce 
between   the    sentiment    of   Love   and   the    physical 

♦For  other  points  of  difference  see  Appendix. 


WOMAN    THE    SERF  43 

passion  which  is  so  common  with  men,  and  which 
causes  them  to  be  aware  of  a  grossness  and  a  conflict 
in  their  ow^n  natures;  she  is,  or  should  be,  the  inter- 
preter of  Love  to  man,  and  in  some  degree  his  guide 
in'  sexual  matters.  More,  since  she  keeps  to  the  great 
lines  of  evolution  and  is  less  biased  and  influenced 
by  the  momentary  currents  of  the  day ;  since  her  life 
is  bound  up  with  the  life  of  the  child ;  since  in  a  way 
she  is  nearer  the  child  herself,  and  nearer  to  the  sav- 
age ;  it  is  to  her  that  Man,  after  his  excursions  and 
wanderings,  mental  and  physical,  continually  tends  to 
return  as  to  his  primitive  home  and  resting-place,  to 
restore  his  balance,  to  find  his  center  of  life,  and  to 
draw  stores  of  energy  and  inspiration  for  fresh  con- 
quests of  the  outer  world.  ''In  women  men  find  beings 
who  have  not  wandered  so  far  as  they  have  from  the 
typical  life  of  earth's  creatures ;  women  are  for  men 
the  human  embodiments  of  the  restful  responsiveness 
of  Nature.  To  every  man,  as  Michelet  has  put  it,  the 
woman  whom  he  loves  is  as  the  Earth  was  to  her 
legendary  son ;  he  has  but  to  fall  down  and  kiss  her 
breast  and  he  is  strong  again."  * 

If  it  be  true  that  by  natural  and  physiological 
right  Woman  stands  in  some  such  primitive  relation- 
ship to  Man,  then  we  may  expect  this  relationship  to 
emerge  again  into  clear  and  reasonable  light  in  course 

•Man  and  Woman,    by  Havelock  Ellis.     Contemporary   Science 
Series,  p.  371. 


44  love's  coming-of-age 

of  time ;  though  it  does  not  of  course  follow  that  a  re- 
lationship founded  on  physiological  distinctions  is  ab- 
solutely permanent — since  these  latter  may  themselves 
vary  to  some  degree.  That  a  more  natural  and  sensi- 
ble relation  of  some  kind  betv^een  the  sexes  is  actually 
coming  to  birth,  few  who  care  to  read  the  signs  of  the 
times  can  well  doubt.  For  the  moment,  however,  and 
by  way  of  parenthesis  before  looking  to  the  future,  we 
have  to  consider  a  little  more  in  detail  the  present 
position  of  women  under  civilization.  Not  that  the 
consideration  will  be  altogether  gracious  and  satis- 
factory, but  that  it  may — we  are  fain  to  hope — afford 
us  some  hints  for  the  future. 

It  was  perhaps  not  altogether  unnatural  that  Man's 
craze  for  property  and  individual  ownership  should 
have  culminated  in  the  enslavement  of  woman — his 
most  precious  and  beloved  object.  But  the  conse- 
quence of  this  absurdity  was  a  whole  series  of  other 
absurdities.  What  between  insincere  flattery  and  rose- 
water  adorations  on  the  one  hand,  and  serfdom  and 
neglect  on  the  other,  woman  was,  as  Havelock  Ellis 
says,  treated  as  "a  cross  between  an  angel  and  an 
idiot."  And  after  a  time,  adapting  herself  to  the  treat- 
ment, she  really  became  something  between  an  angel 
and  an  idiot — a  bundle  of  weak  and  flabby  sentiments, 
combined  with  a  wholly  undeveloped  brain.  More- 
over by  being  continually  specialized  and  specialized  in 
the  sexual  and  domestic  direction,  she  lost  touch  with 


WOMAN    THE    SERF  45 

the  actual  world,  and  grew,  one  may  say,  into  a  sep- 
arate species  from  man — so  that  in  the  later  civiliza- 
tions the  males  and  females,  except  when  the  sex- 
attraction  has  compelled  them  as  it  were  to  come 
together,  have  been  wont  to  congregate  in  separate 
herds,  and  talk  languages  each  unintelligible  to  the 
other.  Says  the  author  of  the  Woman's  Question: 
''I  admit  there  is  no  room  for  pharisaical  self-lauda- 
tion here.  The  bawling  mass  of  mankind  on  a  race- 
course or  the  stock-exchange  is  degrading  enough  in 
all  conscience.  Yet  this  even  is  hardly  s.o  painful  as 
the  sight  which  meets  our  eyes  between  three  and 
four  in  the  afternoon  in  any  fashionable  London 
street.  Hundreds  of  women — mere  dolls — gazing  in- 
tently into  shop-windows  at  various  bits  of  colored 
ribbon.  *  *  *  Perhaps  nothing  is  more  disheart- 
ening than  this,  except  the  mob  of  w'omen  in  these 
very  same  streets  between  twelve  and  one  at  night." 

The  "lady,"  the  household  drudge,  and  the  pros- 
titute, are  the  three  main  types  of  women  resulting  in 
our  modern  civilization  from  the  process  of  the  past 
— and  it  is  hard  to  know  which  is  the  most  wretched, 
which  is  the  most  wronged,  and  which  is  the  most 
unlike  that  which  in  her  own  heart  every  true  woman 
would  desire  to  be. 

In  some  sense  the  "lady"  of  the  period  which  is 
just  beginning  to  pass  away  is  the  most  characteristic 
product    of    Commercialism.      The    sense    of    Private 


46  love's  coming-of-age 

Property,  arising  and  joining  with  the  ''angel  and 
idiot"  theory,  turned  Woman  more  and  more — espe- 
cially of  course  among  the  possessing  classes — into  an 
emblem  of  possession — a  mere  doll,  an  empty  idol,  a 
brag  of  the  man's  exclusive  right  in  the  sex — till  at 
last,  as  her  vain  splendors  increased  and  her  real  use- 
fulness diminished,  she  ultimated  into  the  "perfect 
lady."  But  let  every  woman  who  piques  and  preens 
herself  to  the  fulfilment  of  this  ideal  in  her  own  person, 
remember  what  is  the  cost  and  what  is  the  meaning  of 
her  quest :  the  covert  enslavement  to,  and  the  covert 
contempt  of  Man. 

The  instinct  of  helpful  personal  service  is  so  strong 
in  women,  and  such  a  deep-rooted  part  of  their  na- 
tures, that  to  be  treated  as  a  mere  target  for  other 
people's  worship  and  services — especially  when  this 
is  tainted  with  insincerity — must  be  most  obnoxious 
to  them.  To  think  that  women  still  exist  by  hundreds 
and  hundreds  of  thousands,  women  with  hearts  and 
hands  formed  for  love  and  helpfulness,  who  are 
brought  up  as  "ladies"  and  have  to  spend  their  lives 
listening  to  the  idiotic  platitudes  of  the  Middle-class 
Man,  and  "waited  upon"  by  wage-bought  domestics, 
is  enough  to  make  one  shudder.  The  modern  "gentle- 
man" is  bad  enough,  but  tne  "lady"  of  bourgeois-dom, 
literally  "crucified  twixt  a  smile  and  w^himper,"  pros- 
tituted to  a  life  which  in  her  heart  she  hates — with  its 


WOMAN    THE    SERF  47 

petty  ideals,  its  narrow  horizon,  and  its  empty  honors 
— is  indeed  a  pitiful  spectacle. 

In  Baronial  times  the  household  centered  round 
the  Hall,  where  the  baron  sat  supreme ;  to-day  it  cen- 
ters round  the  room  where  the  lady  reigns.  The 
"with"  is  withdrawn  from  the  withdrawing-room,  and 
that  apartment  has  become  the  most  important  of  all. 
Yet  there  is  an  effect  of  mockery  in  the  homage  paid 
— a  doubt  whether  she  is  really  qualified  yet  for  the 
position.  The  contrast  between  the  two  societies,  the 
Feudal  and  the  Commercial,  is  not  inaptly  represented 
by  this  domestic  change.  The  former  society  was 
rude  and  rough,  but  generous  and  straightforward; 
the  latter  is  polished  and  nice,  but  full  of  littleness  and 
finesse.  The  Drawing-room,  with  its  feeble  manners 
and  effects  of  curtains  and  embroidery,  gives  its  tone 
to  the  new  sovereign ;  and,  as  far  as  her  rule  is  actual, 
to  our  lives  now-a-days.  But  w^e  look  forward  to  a 
time  when  this  room  also  will  cease  to  be  the  center 
of  the  house,  and  another — perhaps  the  Common- 
room — will  take  its  place. 

Below  a  certain  level  in  society — the  distinctively 
commercial — there  are  no  drawing-rooms.  Among 
the  working  masses,  where  the  woman  is  of  indispens- 
able importance  in  daily  life,  and  is  not  sequestered 
as  an  idol,  there  is  no  room  specially  set  apart  for  her 
worship — a  curious  change  takes  place  in  her  nominal 
position,  and  whereas  in  the  supernal  sphere  she  sits 


48  love's  coming-of-age 

in  state  and  has  her  tea  and  bread  and  butter  brought 
to  her  by  obsequious  males,  in  the  cottage  the  men 
take  their  ease  and  are  served  by  the  women.  The 
customs  of  the  cottage,  however,  are  rooted  in  a 
natural  division  of  labor  by  which  the  man  under- 
takes the  outdoor,  and  the  woman  the  indoor  work; 
and  there  is,  I  think,  quite  as  much  real  respect  shown 
to  her  here  as  in  the  drawing-room. 

In  the  cottage,  nevertheless,  the  unfortunate  one 
falls  into  the  second  pit  that  is  prepared  for  her — 
that  of  the  household  drudge;  and  here  she  leads  a 
life  which,  if  it  has  more  honesty  and  reality  in  it 
than  that  of  the  ''lady,"  is  one  of  abject  slavery.  Few 
men  again  realize,  or  trouble  themselves  to  realize, 
what  a  life  this  of  the  working  house-wife  is.  They 
are  accustomed  to  look  upon  their  own  employment, 
whatever  it  may  be,  as  "work"  (perhaps  because  it 
brings  with  it  ''wages") ;  the  woman's  they  regard  as 
a  kind  of  pastime.  They  forget  what  monotonous 
drudgery  it  really  means,  and  yet  what  incessant  fore- 
thought and  care ;  they  forget  that  the  woman  has  no 
eight  hours  day,  that  her  work  is  always  staring  her 
in  the  face,  and  waiting  for  her,  even  on  into  the  night ; 
that  the  body  is  wearied,  and  the  mind  narrowed  down, 
"scratched  to  death  by  rats  ^  and  mice"  in  a  perpetual 
round  of  petty  cares.  For  not  only  does  civilization 
and  multifarious  invention  (including  smoke)  make 
the  burden  of  domestic  life  immensely  complex,  but 


WOMAN    THE    SERF  49 

the  point  is  that  each  housewife  has  to  sustain  this 
burden  to  herself  in  lonely  effort.  What  a  sight,  in 
any  of  our  great  towns,  to  enter  into  the  cottages  or 
tenements  which  form  the  endless  rows  of  suburban 
streets,  and  to  find  in  each  one  a  working  wife  strug- 
gling alone  in  semi-darkness  and  seclusion  with  the 
toils  of  an  entire  separate  household — with  meals  to  be 
planned  and  provided,  with  bread  to  be  baked,  clothes 
to  be  washed  and  mended,  children  to  be  kept  in  order, 
a  husband  to  be  humored,  and  a  house  to  be  swept  and 
dusted;  herself  wearied  and  worried,  debilitated  with 
confinement  and  want  of  fresh  air,  and  low-spirited 
for  want  of  change  and  society !  How  futile !  and  how 
dreary ! 

There  remains  the  third  alternative  for  women; 
nor  can  it  be  wondered  at  that  some  deliberately 
choose  a  life  of  prostitution  as  their  only  escape  from 
the  existence  of  the  lady  or  the  drudge.  Yet  what  a 
choice  it  is !  On  the  one  hand  is  the  caged  Woman, 
and  on  the  other  hand  is  the  free:  and  which  to 
choose?  ''How  can  there  be  a  doubt,"  says  one, 
"surely  freedom  is  always  best."  Then  there  falls  a 
hush.  ''Ah!"  says  society,  pointing  with  its  finger, 
"but  a  free  Woman !' 

And  yet  is  it  possible  for  Woman  ever  to  be 
worthy  her  name,  unless  she  is  free? 

To-day,  or  up  to  to-day,  just  as  the  wage-worker 
has  had  no  means  of  livelihood  except  by  the  sale  of 


^o  love's  coming-of-age 

his  bodily  labor,  so  woman  has  had  no  means  of 
livelihood  except  by  the  surrender  of  her  bodily  sex. 
She  could  dispose  of  it  to  one  man  for  life,  and  have 
in  return  the  respect  of  society  and  the  caged  exist- 
ence of  the  lady  or  the  drudge,  or  she  could  sell  it 
night  by  night  and  be  a  "free  woman,"  scorned  of  the 
world  and  portioned  to  die  in  the  gutter.  In  either 
case  (if  she  really  thinks  about  the  matter  at  all)  she 
must  lose  her  self-respect.  What  a  choice,  what  a 
frightful  choice ! — and  this  has  been  the  fate  of  Woman 
for  how  long? 

If,  as  a  consequence  of  all  this,  woman  has  gone 
down  hill,  there  is  no  doubt  that  man  has  gravitated 
too.  (Or  was  it  really  that  Jack  fell  down  first,  and 
"Jill  came  tumbling  after?")  Anyhow  I  think  that 
nothing  can  be  more  clear — and  this  I  believe  should 
be  taken  as  the  basis  of  any  discussion  on  the  relation 
of  the  sexes — than  that  whatever  injures  the  one  sex 
injures  the  other;  and  that  whatever  defects  or  par- 
tialities may  be  found  in  the  one  must  from  the  nature 
of  the  case  be  tallied  by  corresponding  defects  and  par- 
tialities in  the  other.  The  two  halves  of  the  human 
race  are  complementary,  and  it  is  useless  for  one  to 
attempt  to  glorify  itself  at  the  expense  of  the  other. 
As  in  Olive  Schreinei;'s  allegory  of  Woman  ("Three 
Dreams  in  a  Desert"),  man  and  woman  are  bound 
together  by  a  vital  band,  and  the  one  cannot  move 
a  step  in  advance  of  the  other. 


WOMAN   THE    SERF  5I 

If  we  were  called  upon  to  characterize  these  mutual 
defects  (inbred  partly  by  the  false  property  relation) 
we  should  be  inclined  to  say  they  were  brutality  and 
conceit  on  the  one  hand,  and  finesse  and  subtlety  on 
the  other.  Man,  as  owner,  has  tended  to  become  arro- 
gant and  callous  and  egotistic ;  woman,  as  the  owned, 
slavish  and  crafty  and  unreal. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  and  allowing  that  sweeping 
generalizations  of  this  kind  are  open  to  a  good  many 
exceptions,  we  do  find  (at  any  rate  in  the  British 
Isles)  a  most  wonderful  and  celestial  indifiference  to 
anything  but  their  own  affairs  amongst  the  "lords  of 
creation,"  an  indifference  so  ingrained  and  constitu- 
tional that  it  is  rarely  conscious  of  itself,  and  which 
assumes  quite  easily  and  naturally  that  the  weaker 
sex  exists  for  the  purpose  of  playing  the  foil,  so  to 
speak,  to  the  chief  actor  in  life's  drama.  Nor  does  the 
fact  that  this  indifference  is  tempered,  from  time  to 
time,  by  a  little  gallantry  afford  much  consolation — 
as  may  be  imagined — to  the  woman  who  perceives 
that  the  gallantry  is  inspired  by  nothing  more  than  a 
passing  sex-desire. 

On  the  other  hand  Jill  has  come  tumbling  after 
pretty  quickly,  and  has  tumbled  to  the  conclusion 
that  though  she  cannot  sway  her  lord  by  force,  she 
may  easily  make  use  of  him  by  craft.  Finesse,  devel- 
oped through  scores  of  generations,  combined  with  the 
skillful  use  of  the  glamor  belonging  to  her  sex,  have 


52  love's  coming-of-age 

given  her  an  extraordinary  faculty  of  carrying  out  her 
own  purposes,  often  through  the  most  difficult  passes, 
v^ithout  ever  exposing  her  hand.  Possibly  the  knowl- 
edge of  this  forms  one  reason  why  women  distrust  each 
other  so  much  more  than  men  distrust  each  other. 
Certainly  one  of  the  rarest  of  God's  creatures  is  a 
truly  undesigning  female,  but — when  dowered  with 
intellect  such  as  might  seem  to  justify  it  in  being 
designing — one  of  the  most  admirable  and  beauti- 
ful! 

Looking  a  little  deeper,  and  below  the  superficial 
contract  which  an  unsatisfactory  relation  between 
the  sexes  has  doubtless  created,  one  seems  to  discern 
some  of  those  more  vital  and  deep-rooted  differen- 
tiations spoken  of  on  an  earlier  page.  It  is  a  com- 
monly conceived  opinion  that  woman  tends  more  to 
intuition  and  man  to  logic;*  and  certainly  the  male 
mind  seems  better  able  to  deal  with  abstractions  and 
generalizations,  and  the  female  mind  with  the  personal 
and  the  detailed  and  the  concrete.  And  while  this 
difiference  may  be  in  part  attributable  to  the  artificial 
confinement  of  women  to  the  domestic  sphere,  there 
is  probably  something  more  organic  in  it  than  that. 
At  any  rate  it  gives  to  Woman  some  of  her  best  qual- 
ities— a  quick  and  immediate  perception,  appreciation 
of  character,  tact,  and  a  kind  of  artistic  sense  in  the 

♦Physiologically  speaking  a  certain  excess  of  affectability  anci 
excitability  in  women  over  men  seems  to  be  distinctly  traceable. 


WOMAN    THF.    SERF  53 

ordering  of  her  own  life,  so  that  you  do  not  see  the 
tags  and  unraveled  ends  which  appear  in  man's  con- 
duct. While  the  man  is  blundering  about,  fighting 
with  himself,  hesitating,  doubting,  weighing,  trying 
vainly  to  co-ordinate  all  the  elements  of  his  nature, 
the  woman  (often  no  doubt  in  a  smaller  sphere)  moves 
serene  and  prompt  to  her  ends.  Her  actions  are  char- 
acterized by  grace  and  finality ;  she  is  more  at  unity 
with  herself;  and  she  has  the  inestimable  advantage  of 
living  in  the  world  of  persons — which  may  well  seem 
so  much  more  important  and  full  of  interest  than  that 
of  things. 

On  the  other  hand,  this  want  of  the  power  of 
generalization  has  made  it  difficult  for  woman  (at  any 
rate  up  to  to-day)  to  emerge  from  a  small  circle  of 
interests,  and  to  look  at  things  from  the  point  of 
view  of  public  advantage  and  good.  While  her  sym- 
pathies for  individuals  are  keen  and  quick,  abstract 
and  general  ideas  such  as  those  of  Justice,  Truth,  and 
the  like  have  been  difficult  of  appreciation  to  her ;  and 
her  deficiency  in  logic  has  made  it  almost  impossible 
to  act  upon  her  through  the  brain.  A  man,  if  he  is 
on  the  wrong  track,  can  be  argued  with ;  but  with  a 
woman  of  this  type,  if  her  motives  are  nefarious,  there 
is  no  means  of  changing  them  by  appeal  to  her  rea- 
son, or  to  the  general  sense  of  Justice  and  Right — and 
unless  controlled  by  the  stronger  sway  of  a  determined 


54  LOVE  S    COMING-OF-AGE 

personal  will  (of  a  man)  her  career  is  liable  to  be  pretty 
bad. 

Generally  it  will  be  admitted,  as  we  are  dealing 
with  points  of  mental  and  moral  difiference  between 
the  sexes,  Man  has  developed  the  more  active,  and 
Woman  the  more  passive  qualities ;  and  it  is  pretty 
obvious,  here  too,  that  this  difference  is  not  only  due 
to  centuries  of  social  inequality  and  of  property- 
marriage,  but  roots  back  in  some  degree  to  the  very 
nature  of  their  respective  sexual  functions.  That  there 
are  permanent  complementary  distinctions  between  the 
male  and  female,  dating  first  perhaps  from  sex,  and 
thence  spreading  over  the  whole  natures,  physical, 
mental  and  moral,  of  each,  no  one  can  reasonably 
doubt.  These  distinctions  have,  however,  we  contend, 
been  strangely  accentuated  and  exaggerated  during 
the  historic  period — till  at  last  a  point  of  maximum 
divergence  and  absolute  misunderstanding  has  been 
reached.    But  that  point  is  behind  us  now. 


WOMAN 

IN    FREEDOM 


IT  is  clear  enough,  from  what  has  been  said,  that 
what  Woman  most  needs  to-day,  and  is  mostly 
seeking  for,  is  a  basis  of  independence  for  her  life. 
Nor  is  her  position  likely  to  be  improved  until  she 
is  able  to  face  man  on  an  equality;  to  find,  self-bal- 
anced, her  natural  relation  to  him;  and  to  dispose  of 
herself  and  of  her  sex  perfectly  freely,  and  not  as  a 
thrall  must  do. 

Doubtless  if  man  were  an  ideal  creature  his  mate 
might  be  secure  of  equal  and  considerate  treatment 
from  him  without  having  to  insist  upon  an  absolute 
economic  independence;  but  as  that  is  only  too  ob- 
viously not  the  case  there  is  nothing  left  for  her  to- 
day but  to  unfold  the  war-flag  of  her  "rights,"  and 
(dull  and  tiresome  as  it  may  be)  to  go  through  a 
whole  weary  round  of  battles  till  peace  is  concluded 
again  upon  a  better  understanding. 

Yet  it  must  never  be  forgotten  that  nothing  short 
of  large  social  changes,  stretching  beyond  the  sphere 
of  women  only,  can  bring  about  the  complete  emanci- 


56 

pation  of  the  latter.  Nat  till  our  whole  commercial 
system,  with  its  barter  and  sale  of  human  labor  and 
human  love  for  gain,  is  done  away,  and  not  till  a 
whole  new  code  of  ideals  and  customs  of  life  has  come 
in,  will  women  really  be  free.  They  must  remember 
that  their  cause  is  also  the  cause  of  the  oppressed 
laborer  over  the  whole  earth,  and  the  laborer  has  to 
remember  that  his  cause  is  theirs.* 

And  since  Motherhood  is,  after  all,  woman's  great 
and  incomparable  work,  people  will  come  to  see  that 
a  sane  maternity  is  one  of  the  very  first  things  to 
be  considered — and  that  really,  though  not  the  only 
consideration,  it  is  a  work  which  if  properly  fulfilled 
does  involve  the  broadest  and  largest  culture.  Per- 
haps this  might  seem  to  some  only  too  obvious;  yet 
when  for  a  moment  we  glance  around  at  the  current 
ideals,  when  we  see  what  Whitman  calls  "the  incred- 
ible holds  and  webs  of  silliness,  millinery  and  every 
kind  of  dyspeptic  depletion"  in  which  women  them- 
selves live,  when  we  see  the  absolute  want  of  training 
for  motherhood  and  the  increasing  physical  incapacity 
for  it,  and  even  the  feminine  censure  of  those  who 
pass  through  the  ordeal  too  easily,  we  begin  to  realize 

*The  freedom  of  Woman  must  ultimately  rest  on  the  Communism 
of  society— which  alone  can  give  her  support  during  the  period  of 
Motherhood,  without  forcing  her  into  dependence  on  the  arbitrary 
will  of  one  man.  While  the  present  effort  of  women  towards  earn- 
ing their  own  economic  independence  is  a  healthy  sign  and  a  neces- 
sary feature  of  the  times,  it  is  evident  that  it  alone  will  not  entirely 
solve  the  problem,  since  it  is  just  during  the  diflflcult  years  of 
Motherhood,  when  support  is  most  needed,  that  the  woman  is  least 
capable  of  earning  it  for  herself.    (See   Appendix.) 


WOMAN    IN    FREEDOM  57 

how  little  the  present  notion  of  what  woman  should 
be  is  associated  with  the  healthy  fulfilment  of  her  most 
perfect  work.  A  woman  capable  at  all  points  to  bear 
children,  to  guard  them,  to  teach  them,  to  turn  them 
out  strong  and  healthy  citizens  of  the  great  world, 
stands  at  the  farthest  remove  from  the  finnikin  doll  or 
the  meek'  drudge  whom  man  by  a  kind  of  false  sexual 
selection  has  through  many  centuries  evolved  as  his 
ideal. 

The  nervous  and  sexual  systems  of  women  to-day, 
ruined  among  the  rich  by  a  life  and  occupations 
which  stimulate  the  emotional  sensibilities  without 
ever  giving  the  strength  and  hardiness  which  flow 
from  healthy  and  regular  industry,  and  often  ruined 
among  the  poor  by  excessive  labor  carried  on  under 
most  unhealthy  conditions,  make  real  wifehood  and 
motherhood  things  almost  unknown.  "Injudicious 
training,"  says  Bebel,  "miserable  social  conditions 
(food,  dwelling,  occupation)  produce  weak,  bloodless, 
nervous  beings,  incapable  of  fulfilling  the  duties  of 
matrimony.  The  consequences  are  menstrual  troubles* 
and  disturbances  in  the  various  organs  connected  with 
sexual  functions,  rendering  maternity  dangerous  or 
impossible.  Instead  of  a  healthy,  cheerful  companion, 
a  capable  mother,  a  helpmate  equal  to  the  calls  made 
upon  her  activity,  the  husband  has  a  nervous  excita- 

•See   "Appendix." 


58  love's  coming-of-age 

ble  wife,  permanently  under  the  doctor's  hands,  and  too 
fragile  to  bear  the  slightest  draught  or  noise." 

The  Modern  Woman  sees  plainly  enough  that  no 
decent  advance  for  her  sex  is  possible  until  this  whole 
question  is  fairly  faced — involving,  as  of  course  it  will 
do,  a  life  very  different  from  her  present  one,  far  more 
in  the  open  air,  with  real  bodily  exercise  and  develop- 
ment, some  amount  of  regular  manual  work,  a  knowl- 
edge of  the  laws  of  health  and  physiology,  an  alto- 
gether wider  mental  outlook,  and  greater  self-reliance 
and  nature-hardihood.  But  when  once  these  things 
are  granted,  she  sees  that  she  will  no  longer  be  the 
serf,  but  the  equal,  the  mate,  and  the  comrade  of 
Man. 

Before  any  such  new  conception  it  is  obvious 
enough  that  the  poor  little  pinched  ideal  of  the  "lady," 
which  has  ruled  society  so  long,  will  fade  away  into 
distance  and  obscurity.  People  may  rail  at  the  new 
developments,  but  what,  it  may  be  asked,  can  any 
decently  sensible  woman  think  of  her  present  position 
— of  the  mock  salutations  and  heroic  politeness  of  the 
conventional  male — with  their  suggestion  of  an  empty 
homage  to  weakness  and  incapacity ;  of  the  unwritten 
law  which  condemns  her,  if  occupying  any  place  in 
society,  to  bridle  in  her  chin  and  use  an  affected  speech 
in  order  that  it  may  be  patent  to  everybody  that  she 
is  not  free ;  which  forbids  natural  and  spontaneous 
gesture  as  unbecoming  and  suspicious — and  indeed  in 


WOMAN    IN    FREEDOM  59 

any  public  place  as  liable  to  the  attention  of  the  police- 
man; what  can  she  think  of  the  perpetual  lies  under 
which  she  has  to  live — too  numerous  to  be  recorded ; 
except  that  all  these  things  are  intolerable?  Rather 
than  remain  in  such  a  coil  the  modern  woman  is  sensi- 
ble enough  to  see  that  she  must  face  the  stigma  of 
doing  things  *'unlady-like ;"  and  that  only  by  facing 
it  can  she  win  her  true  place  in  the  world,  and  a  real 
comradeship  with  the  only  class  of  man  who  is  capable 
of  such  a  thing — namely,  the  man  who  is  willing  not 
to  be  ''a  gentleman." 

That  a  new  code  of  manners  between  the  sexes, 
founded  not  on  covert  lust  but  on  open  and  mutual 
helpfulness,  has  got  to  come  in,  is  obvious  enough. 
The  cry  of  equality  need  not  like  a  red  rag  infuriate 
the  Philistine  bull.  That  woman  is  in  general  muscu- 
larly  weaker  than  man,  and  that  tl^ere  are  certain 
kinds  of  effort,  even  mental,  for  which  she  is  less 
fitted — as  there  are  other  kinds  of  effort  for  which  she 
is  more  fitted — may  easily  be  granted ;  but  this  only 
means,  in  the  language  of  all  good  manners,  that  there 
are  special  ways  in  which  men  can  assist  women,  as 
there  are  special  ways  in  which  women  can  assist  men. 
Anything  which  goes  beyond  this,  and  the  friendly 
exchange  of  equal  services,  and  which  assumes,  in  the 
conventionalities  of  the  private  household  or  the  pub- 
lic place,  that  the  female  claims  a  general  indulgence 
(because  of  her  general  incapacity)   is  an  offence — 


6o  love's  coming-of-age 

against  the  encouragement  of  which  women  them- 
selves will  no  doubt  be  on  their  guard. 

I  say  the  signs  of  revolt  on  the  part  of  the  lady 
class — revolt  long  delayed  but  now  spreading  all  along 
the  line — are  evident  enough.  When,  however,  we 
come  to  the  second  type  of  woman  mentioned  in  the 
preceding  pages,  the  working-wife,  we — naturally 
enough — do  not  find  much  conscious  movement.  The 
life  of  the  household  drudge  is  too  like  that  of  a  slave, 
too  much  consumed  in  mere  toil,  too  little  illuminated 
by  any  knowledge,  for  her  to  rise  of  herself  to  any 
other  conception  of  existence.  Nevertheless  it  is  not 
difficult  to  see  that  general  and  social  changes  are 
working  to  bring  about  her  liberation  also.  Improved 
house-construction,  public  bakeries  and  laundries,  and 
so  forth,  and,  what  is  much  more  important,  a  more 
rational  and  simple  and  healthful  notion  of  food  and 
furniture,  are  tending  very  largely  to  reduce  the  labors 
of  Housework  and  Cookery ;  and  conservative  though 
women  are  in  their  habits,  when  these  changes  are 
brought  to  their  doors  they  cannot  but  see  the  ad- 
vantage of  them.  Public  institutions  too  are  more 
and  more  taking  over  the  responsibilities  and  the  cost 
of  educating  and  rearing  children ;  and  even  here  and 
there  we  may  discern  a  drift  towards  the  amalgama- 
tion of  households,  which  by  introducing  a  common 
life  and  division  of  labor  among  the  women-folk  will 
probably  do  much  to  cheer  and  lighten  their  lot.    None 


WOMAN    IN    FREEDOM  6l 

of  these  changes,  however,  will  be  of  great  use  unless 
or  until  they  wake  the  overworked  woman  herself  to 
see  and  insist  on  her  rights  to  a  better  life,  and  until 
they  force  from  the  man  a  frank  acknowledgment  of 
her  claim.  And  surely  here  and  there  the  man  himself 
will  do  something  to  educate  his  mate  to  this  point. 
We  see  no  reason  indeed  why  he  should  not  assist  in 
some  part  of  the  domestic  work,  and  thus  contribute 
his  share  of  labor  and  intelligence  to  the  conduct  of 
the  house ;  nor  why  the  woman — being  thus  relieved — 
should  not  occasionally,  and  when  desirable,  find  sal- 
aried work  outside,  and  so  contribute  to  the  mainte- 
nance of  the  family,  and  to  her  ow^n  security  and  sense 
of  independence.  The  over-differentiation  of  the  labors 
of  the  sexes  to-day  is  at  once  a  perpetuation  of  the 
servitude  of  women  and  a  cause  of  misunderstanding 
between  her  and  man,  and  of  lack  of  interest  in  each 
other's  doings. 

The  third  type  of  woman,  the  prostitute,  provides 
us  with  that  question  which — according  to  Bebel — is 
the  sphinx-riddle  that  modern  society  cannot  solve, 
and  yet  which  unsolved  threatens  society's  destruc- 
tion. The  commercial  prostitution  of  love  is  the  last 
outcome  of  our  whole  social  system,  and  its  most  clear 
condemnation.  It  flaunts  in  our  streets,  it  hides  itself 
in  the  garment  of  respectability  under  the  name  of 
matrimony,  it  eats  in  actual  physical  disease  and  death 
right  through  our  midst ;  it  is  fed  by  the  oppression 


62  love's  coming-of-age 

and  the  ignorance  of  women,  by  their  poverty  and  de- 
nied means  of  liveHhood,  and  by  the  hypocritical 
puritanism  v^hich  forbids  them  by  milHons  not  only 
to  gratify  but  even  to  speak  of  their  natural  desires ; 
and  it  is  encouraged  by  the  callousness  of  an  age 
which  has  accustomed  men  to  buy  and  sell  for  money 
every  most  precious  thing — even  the  life-long  labor  of 
their  brothers,  therefore  why  not  also  the  very  bodies 
of  their  sisters? 

Here  there  is  no  solution  except  the  freedom  of 
woman — which  means  of  course  also  the  freedom  of 
the  masses  of  the  people,  men  and  wximen,  and  the 
ceasing  altogether  of  economic  slavery.  There  is 
no  solution  which  will  not  include  the  redemption  of 
the  terms  "free  woman"  and  "free  love"  to  their  true 
and  rightful  significance.  Let  every  woman  whose 
heart  bleeds  for  the  sufferings  of  her  sex,  hasten  to 
declare  herself  and  to  constitute  herself,  as  far  as  she 
possibly  can,  a  free  woman.  Let  her  accept  the  term 
with  all  the  odium  that  belongs  to  it ;  let  her  insist  on 
her  right  to  speak,  dress,  think,  act,  and  above  all  to 
use  her  sex,  as  she  deems  best ;  let  her  face  the  scorn 
and  the  ridicule  ;  let  her  "lose  her  own  life"  if  she  likes  ; 
assured  that  only  so  can  come  deliverance,  and  that 
only  when  the  free  woman  is  honored  will  the  prosti- 
tute cease  to  exist.  And  let  every  man  who  really 
would  respect  his  counterpart,  entreat  her  also  to  act 
so ;  let  him  never  by  word  or  deed  tempt  her  to  grant 


WOMAN    IN    FREEDOM  63 

as  a  bargain  what  can  only  be  precious  as  a  gift ;  let 
him  see  her  with  pleasure  stand  a  little  aloof;  let  him 
help  her  to  gain  her  feet;  so  at  last,  by  what  slight 
sacrifices  on  his  part  such  a  course  may  involve,  will 
it  dawn  upon  him  that  he  has  gained  a  real  companion 
and  helpmate  on  life's  journey. 

The  whole  evil  of  commercial  prostitution  arises 
out  of  the  domination  of  Man  in  matters  of  sex.  Bet- 
ter indeed  were  a  Saturnalia  of  free  men  and  women 
than  the  spectacle  which  as  it  is  our  great  cities  pre- 
sent at  night.  Here  in  Sex,  the  women's  instincts  are, 
as  a  rule,  so  clean,  so  direct,  so  well-rooted  in  the 
needs  of  the  race,  that  except  for  man's  domination 
they  would  scarcely  have  suffered  this  peryersion.  Sex 
in  man  is  an  unorganized  passion,  an  individual  need 
or  impetus ;  but  in  woman  it  may  more  properly  be 
termed  a  constructive  instinct,  with  the  larger  signifi- 
cation that  that  involves.  Even  more  than  man  should 
woman  be  ''free"  to  work  out  the  problem  of  her  sex- 
relations  as  may  commend  itself  best  to  her — hampered 
as  little  as  possible  by  legal,  conventional,  or  economic 
considerations,  and  relying  chiefly  on  her  own  native 
sense  and  tact  in  the  matter.  Once  thus  free — free 
from  the  mere  cash-nexus  to  a  husband,  from  the 
money-slavery  of  the  streets,  from  the  nameless  terrors 
of  social  opinion,  and  from  the  threats  of  the  choice 
of  perpetual  virginity  or  perpetual  bondage — would 
she  not  indeed  choose  her  career  (whether  that  of  wife 


64  love's  coming-of-age 

and  mother,  or  that  of  free  companion,  or  one  of  single 
blessedness)  far  better  for  herself  than  it  is  chosen  for 
her  to-day — regarding  really  in  some  degree  the  needs 
of  society,  and  the  welfare  of  children,  and  the  sin- 
cerity and  durability  of  her  relations  to  her  lovers, 
and  less  the  petty  motives  of  profit  and  fear  ? 

The  point  is  that  the  whole  conception  of  a  nobler 
Womanhood  for  the  future  has  to  proceed  candidly 
from  this  basis  of  her  complete  freedom  as  to  the  dis- 
posal of  her  sex,  and  from  the  healthy  conviction  that, 
with  whatever  individual  aberrations,  she  will  on  the 
whole  use  that  freedom  rationally  and  well.  And  sure- 
ly this — in  view  too  of  some  decent  education  of  the 
young  on  sexual  matters — is  not  too  great  a  demand 
to  make  on  our  faith  in  women.  If  it  is,  then  indeed 
we  are  undone — for  short  of  this  we  can  only  retain 
them  in  servitude,  and  society  in  its  form  of  the  hell 
on  earth  which  it  largely  is  to-day. 

Refreshing  therefore  in  its  way  is  the  spirit  of 
revolt  which  is  spreading  on  all  sides.  Let  us  hope 
such  revolt  will  continue.  If  it  lead  here  and  there  to 
strained  or  false  situations,  or  to  temporary  misunder- 
standings— still,  declared  enmity  is  better  than  unreal 
acquiescence.  Too  long  have  women  acted  the  part  of 
mere  appendages  to  the  male,  suppressing  their  own 
individuality  and  fostering  his  self-conceit.  In  order 
to  have  souls  of  their  own  they  must  free  themselves, 
and  greatly  by  their  own  efforts.    They  must  learn  to 


WOMAN    IN    FREEDOM  65 

fight.  Whitman  in  his  poem  "A  Woman  Waits  for 
Me,"  draws  a  picture  of  a  woman  who  stands  in  the 
sharpest  possible  contrast  with  the  feeble  bourgeois 
ideal — a  woman  who  can  ''swim,  row,  ride,  wrestle, 
shoot,  run,  strike,  retreat,  defend  herself,"  etc. ;  and 
Bebel,  in  his  book  on  Woman,  while  pointing  out  that 
in  Sparta,  -'where  the  greatest  attention  was  paid  to 
the  physical  development  of  both  sexes,  boys  and  girls 
w^ent  about  naked  till  they  had  reached  the  age  of 
puberty,  and  were  trained  together  in  bodily  exercises, 
games  and  wrestling,"  complains  that  nowadays  "the 
notion  that  women  require  strength,  courage  and  reso- 
lution is  regarded  as  very  heterodox."  But  the  truth 
is  that  qualities  of  courage  and  independence  are  not 
agreeable  in  a  slave,  and  that  is  why  man  during  all 
these  centuries  has  consistently  discountenanced  them 
— ^till  at  last  the  female  herself  has  come  to  consider 
them  "unwomanly."  Yet  this  last  epithet  is  absurd ; 
for  if  tenderness  is  the  crown  and  glory  of  woman, 
nothing  can  be  more  certain  than  that  true  tenderness 
is  only  found  in  strong  and  courageous  natures;  the 
tenderness  of  a  servile  person  is  no  tenderness  at  all. 
It  has  not  escaped  the  attention  of  thinkers  on 
these  subjects  that  the  rise  of  Women  into  freedom 
and  larger  social  life  here  alluded  to — and  already 
indeed  indicated  by  the  march  of  events — is  likely  to 
have  a  profound  influence  on  the  future  of  our  race, 
lit  is  pointed  out  that  among  most  of  the  higher  ani- 


66  love's  comino-of-age 

mals,  and  indeed  among  many  of  the  early  races  of 
mankind,  the  males  have  been  selected  by  the  females 
on  account  of  their  prov^ess  or  superior  strength  or 
beauty,  and  this  has  led  to  the  evolution  in  the  males 
and  in  the  race  at  large  of  a  type  which  (in  a  dim  and 
unconscious  manner)  was  the  ideal  of  the  female.* 
But  as  soon  as  in  the  history  of  mankind  the  property- 
love  set  in,  and  woman  became  the  chattel  of  man, 
this  action  ceased.  She,  being  no  longer  free,  could 
not  possibly  choose  man,  but  rather  the  opposite  took 
place,  and  man  began  to  select  woman  for  the  charac- 
teristics pleasing  to  him.  The  latter  now  adorned 
herself  to  gratify  his  taste,  and  the  female  type  and 
consequently  the  type  of  the  whole  race  have  been 
correspondingly  affected.  With  the  return  of  woman 
to  freedom  the  ideal  of  the  female  may  again  resume 
its  sway.  It  is  possible  indeed  that  the  more  dignified 
and  serious  attitude  of  women  towards  sex  may  give 
to  sexual  selection  when  exercised  by  them  a  nobler 
influence  than  when  exercised  by  the  males.  Anyhow 
it  is  not  difficult  to  see  that  women  really  free  would 
never  countenance  for  their  mates  the  many  mean  and 
unclean  types  of  men  who  to-day  seem  to  have  things 
all  their  own  way,  nor  consent  to  have  children  by 
such  men ;  nor  is  it  difiBcult  to  imagine  that  the  femi- 
nine influence  might  thus  sway  to  the  evolution  of  a 
♦See   "Appendix." 


WOMAN    IN    FREEDOM  67 

more  manly  and  dignified  race  than  has  been  disclosed 
in  these  last  days  of  commercial  civilization ! 

The  Modern  Woman  with  her  clubs,  her  debates, 
her  politics,  her  freedom  of  action  and  costume,  is 
forming  a  public  opinion  of  her  own  at  an  amazing 
rate ;  and  seems  to  be  preparing  to  "spank"  and  even 
thump  the  Middle-class  Man  in  real  earnest!  What 
exactly  evolution  may  be  preparing  for  us,  we  do  not 
know,  but  apparently  some  lively  sparring  matches 
between  the  sexes.  Of  course  all  will  not  be  smooth 
sailing.  The  women  of  the  new  movement  are  nat- 
urally largely  drawn  from  those  in  whom  the  maternal 
instinct  is  not  especially  strong;  also  from  those  in 
whom  the  sexual  instinct  is  not  preponderant.  Such 
women  do  not  altogether  represent  their  sex ;  some  are 
rather  mannish  in  temperament;  some  are  "homo- 
genic,"  that  is,  inclined  to  attachments  to  their  own, 
rather  than  to  the  opposite,  sex;  some  are  ultra- 
rationalizing  and  brain-cultured ;  to  many,  children  are 
more  or  less  a  bore ;  to  others,  man's  sex-passion  is  a 
mere  impertinence,  which  they  do  not  understand,  and 
whose  place  they  consequently  misjudge.  It  would 
not  do  to  say  that  the  majority  of  the  new  move- 
ment are  thus  out  of  line,  but  there  is  no  doubt 
that  a  large  number  are ;  and  the  course  of  their  prog- 
ress will  be  correspondingly  curvilinear. 

'  Perhaps  the  deficiency  in  maternal  instinct  would 
seem  the  most  serious  imputation.     But  then,   who 


68  love's  coming-of-age 

knows  (as  we  have  said)  what  evolution  is  preparing? 
Sometimes  it  seems  possible  that  a  new  sex  is  on 
the  make — like  the  feminine  neuters  of  Ants  and 
Bees— not  adapted  for  child-bearing,  but  with  a  mar- 
velous and  perfect  instinct  of  social  service,  indispens- 
able for  the  maintenance  of  the  common  life.  Certainly 
most  of  those  who  are  freeing  themselves — often  with 
serious  struggles — from  the  ''lady"  chrysalis  are  fired 
with  an  ardent  social  enthusiasm;  and  if  they  may 
personally  differ  in  some  respects  from  the  average  of 
their  sex,  it  is  certain  that  their  efforts  will  result  in  a 
tremendous  improvement  in  the  general  position  of 
their  more  commonplace  sisters. 

If  it  should  turn  out  that  a  certain  fraction  of  the 
feminine  sex  should  for  one  reason  or  another  not 
devote  itself  to  the  work  of  maternity,  still  the  influ- 
ence of  this  section  would  react  on  the  others  to  render 
their  notion  of  motherhood  far  more  dignified  than  be- 
fore. There  is  not  much  doubt  that  in  the  future  this 
most  important  of  human  labors  will  be  carried  on 
with  a  degree  of  conscious  intelligence  hitherto  un- 
known, and  which  will  raise  it  from  the  fulfilment  of  a 
mere  instinct  to  the  completion  of  a  splendid  social 
purpose.  To  save  the  souls  of  children  as  well  as 
their  bodies,  to  raise  heroic  as  well  as  prosperous  citi- 
zens, will  surely  be  the  desire  and  the  work  of  the 
mothers  of  our  race.* 


*As  to  the  maternal  teaching  of  children,  it  must  be  confessed 


WOMAN    IN    FREEDOM  69 

It  will  perhaps  be  said  that  after  going  about  to 
show  (as  in  the  previous  chapter)  the  deficiency  of 
women  hitherto  in  the  matter  of  the  generalizing 
faculty,  it  is  somewhat  inconsistent  to  express  any 
great  hope  that  they  will  ever  take  much  active  inter- 
est in  the  general  social  life  to  which  they  belong ;  but 
indeed  the  answer  to  this  is  that  they  are  already  be- 
ginning to  do  so.  The  social  enthusiasm  and  activity 
shown  by  women  in  Britain,  Russia,  and  the  United 
States  is  so  great  and  well-rooted  that  it  is  impossible 
to  believe  it  a  mere  ephemeral  event;  and  though  in 
the  older  of  these  countries  it  is  at*  present  confined 
to  the  more  w^ealthy  classes,  we  can  augur  from  that 
— according  to  a  well-known  principle — that  it  will  in 
time  spread  downwards  to  the  women  of  the  nation. 

Important  as  is  the  tendency  of  women  in  the 
countries  mentioned  to  higher  education  and  brain 
development,  I  think  it  is  evident  that  the  widening 
and  socialization  of  their  interests  is  not  taking  place 
so  much  through  mere  study  of  books  and  the  passing 
of  examinations  in  political  economy  and  other  sci- 
ences, as  through  the  extended  actual  experience  which 
the  life  of  the  day  is  bringing  to  them.  Certainly  the 
book-studies  are  important  and  must  not  be  neglected ; 


that  it  has,  in  late  times,  been  most  dismal.  Whether  among  the 
masses  or  the  classes  the  idea  has  been  first  and  foremost  to 
impress  upon  them  the  necessity  of  sliding  through  life  as  com- 
fortably as  possible,  and  the  parting  word  to  the  boy  leaving  home 
to  launch  into  the  groat  world  has  seldom  risen  to  a  more  heroic 
strain  than  "Don't  forget  your  flannels!" 


70  love's  coming- of-age 

but  above  all  is  it  imperative  (and  men,  if  they  are  to 
have  any  direct  sway  in  the  future  destinies  of  the 
other  sex,  must  look  to  it)  that  women,  so  long  con- 
fined to  the  narrowest  mere  routine  and  limited  circle 
of  domestic  life,  should  see  and  get  experience,  all 
they  can,  of  the  actual  world.  The  theory,  happily  now 
exploding,  of  keeping  them  "innocent"  through  sheer 
ignorance  partakes  too  much  of  the  "angel  and  idiot" 
view.  To  see  the  life  of  slum  and  palace  and  work- 
shop, to  enter  into  the  trades  and  professions,  to  be- 
come doctors,  nurses,  and  so  forth,  to  have  to  look 
after  themselves  and  to  hold  their  own  as  against 
men,  to  travel,  to  meet  with  sexual  experience,  to 
work  together  in  trade-unions,  to  join  in  social  and 
political  uprisings  and  rebellions,  etc.,  is  what  women 
want  just  now.  And  it  is  evident  enough  that  at  any 
rate  among  the  more  prosperous  sections  in  this 
country  such  a  movement  is  going  on  apace.  If  the 
existence  of  the  enormous  hordes  of  unattached  fe- 
males that  we  find  living  on  interest  and  dividends 
to-day  is  a  blemish  from  a  Socialistic  point  of  view ;  if 
we  find  them  on  the  prowl  all  over  the  country,  filling 
the  theaters  and  concert-rooms  and  public  entertain- 
ments in  the  proportion  of  three  to  one  male,  besetting 
the  trains,  swarming  onto  the  tops  of  the  'buses,  dodg- 
ing on  bicycles  under  the  horses'  heads,  making 
speeches  at  street  corners,  blocking  the  very  pave- 
ments in  the  front  of  fashionable  shops,  we  must  not 


WOMAN    IN    FREEDOM  *J1 

forget  that  for  the  objects  we  have  just  sketched,  even 
this  class  is  going  the  most  direct  way  to  work,  and 
laying  in  stores  of  experience,  which  will  make  it  im- 
possible for  it  ever  to  return  to  the  petty  life  of  times 
gone  by. 

At  the  last,  and  after  centuries  of  misunderstanding 
and  association  of  triviality  and  superficiality  with  the 
female  sex,  it  will  perhaps  dawn  upon  the  w^orld  that 
the  truth  really  lies  in  an  opposite  direction — -that,  in 
a  sense,  there  is  something  more  deep-lying  funda- 
mental and  primitive  in  the  woman  nature  than  in  that 
of  the  man ;  that  instead  of  being  the  over-sensitive 
hysterical  creature  that  civilization  has  too  often  made 
her,  she  is  essentially  of  calm  large  and  acceptive  even 
though  emotional  temperament.  "Her  shape  arises," 
says  Walt  Whitman, 

"She  less  guarded  than  ever,  yet  more  guarded  than  ever. 
The  gross  and  soil'd  she  moves  among  do  not  make  her 

gross  and  soil'd, 
She  knows  the  thoughts  as  she  passes,  nothing  is  concealed 

from  her, 
She  is  none  the  less  considerate  or  friendly  therefor, 
She  is  the  best  belov'd,  it  is  without  exception;  she  has  no 

reason  to  fear,  and  she  does  not  fear." 

The  Greek  goddesses  look  down  and  across  the 
ages  to  the  very  outposts  beyond  civilization ;  and 
already  from  far  America,  Australasia,  Africa,  Nor- 
way, Russia,  as  even  in  our  midst  from  those  who 


72  love's  coming-of-age 

have  crossed  the  border-hne  of  all  class  and  caste, 
glance  forth  the  features  of  a  grander  type — fearless 
and  untamed — the  primal  merging  into  the  future 
Woman;  who,  combining  broad  sense  with  sensibil- 
ity, the  passion  for  Nature  with  the  love  of  Man,  and 
commanding  indeed  the  details  of  life,  yet  risen  out 
of  localism  and  convention,  will  help  us  to  undo  the 
bands  of  death  which  encircle  the  present  society,  and 
open  the  doors  to  a  nev/  and  a  wider  life. 


MARRIAGE 

A  RETROSPECT 


/^  F  the  great  mystery  of  human  Love,  and  that 
^-^  most  Intimate  personal  relation  of  two  souls  to 
each  other — perhaps  the  firmest,  most  basic  and  indis- 
soluble fact  (after  our  own  existence)  that  we  know; 
of  that  strange  sense — often,  perhaps  generally,  instan- 
taneous— of  long  precedent  familiarity  and  kinship, 
that  deep  reliance  on  and  acceptation  of  another  in  his 
or  her  entirety;  of  the  tremendous  strength  of  the 
chain  which  thus  at  times  will  bind  two  hearts  in  life- 
long dedication  and  devotion,  persuading  and  indeed 
not  seldom  compelling  the  persons  concerned  to  the 
sacrifice  of  some  of  the  other  elements  of  their  lives 
and  characters;  and,  withal,  of  a  certain  inscrutable 
veiledness  from  each  other  which  so  frequently  accom- 
panies the  relation  of  the  opposite  sexes,  and  which 
forms  at  once  the  abiding  charm,  and  the  pain,  some- 
thnes  the  tragedy,  of  their  union ;  of  this  palpitating 
winged  living  thing,  which  one  may  perhaps  call  the 
real  Marriage — I  would  say  but  little ;  for  indeed  it  is 
only  fitting  or  possible  to  speak  of  it  by  indirect  lan- 
guage and  suggestion,  nor  may  one  venture  to  rudely 


74  love's  coming-of-age 

drag  it  from  its  sanctuary  into  the  light  of  the  com- 
mon gaze. 

Compared  with  this,  the  actual  marriage,  in  its 
squalid  perversity  as  we  too  often  have  occasion  of 
knowing  it,  is  as  the  wretched  idol  of  the  savage  to 
the  reality  which  it  is  supposed  to  represent ;  and  one 
seems  to  hear  the  Aristophanic  laughter  of  the  gods 
as  they  contemplate  man's  little  clay  image  of  the 
Heavenly  Love — which,  cracked  in  the  fire  of  daily 
life,  he  is  fain  to  bind  together  with  rusty  hoops  of 
law,  and  parchment  bonds,  lest  it  should  crumble  and 
fall  to  pieces  altogether. 

The  whole  subject,  wide  as  life  itself — as  Heaven 
and  Hell — eludes  anything  like  adequate  treatment, 
and  we  need  make  no  apology  for  narrowing  down 
our  considerations  here  to  just  a  few  practical  points ; 
and  if  we  cannot  navigate  upward  into  the  very  heart 
of  the  matter — namely,  into  the  causes  which  make 
some  people  love  each  other  with  a  true  and  perfect 
love,  and  others  unite  in  obedience  to  but  a  counterfeit 
passion — yet  we  may  fairly,  I  imagine,  study  some  of 
the  conditions  which  give  to  actual  marriage  its  pres- 
ent form,  or  which  in  the  future  are  likely  to  provide 
real  aflfection  with  a  more  satisfactory  expression  than 
it  has  as  a  rule  to-day. 

As  long  as  man  is  only  half-grown,  and  woman  is 
a  serf  or  a  parasite,  it  can  hardly  be  expected  that 
Marriage  should  be  particularly  successful.     Two  peo- 


MARRIAGE:    A    RETROSPECT  75 

pie  come  together,  who  know  but  Httle  of  each  other, 
who  have  been  brought  up  along  different  lines,  who 
certainly  do  not  understand  each  other's  nature ;  whose 
mental  interests  and  occupations  are  different,  whose 
worldly  interests  and  advantage  are  also  different ;  to 
one  of  whom  'the  subject  of  sex  is  probably  a  sealed 
book,  to  the  other  perhaps  a  book  whose  most  dismal 
page  has  been  opened  first.  The  man  needs  an  outlet 
for  his  passion ;  the  girl  is  looking  for  a  "home"  and 
a  proprietor.  A  glamor  of  illusion  descends  upon  the 
two,  and  drives  them  intO'  each  other's  arms.  It  en- 
velopes in  a  gracious  and  "misty  halo  all  their  differ- 
ences and  misapprehension?.  They  marry  without 
misgiving;  and  their  hearts  overflow  with  gratitude  to 
the  white-surpliced  old  gentleman  who  reads  the  serv- 
ice over  them. 

But  at  a  later  hour,  and  with  calmer  thought,  they 
begin  to  realize  that  it  is  a  life-sentence  which  he  has 
so  suavely  passed  upon  them — not  reducible  (as  in  the 
case  of  ordinary  convicts)  even  to  a  term  of  20  years. 
The  brief  burst  of  their  first  satisfaction  has  been  fol- 
lowed by  satiety  on  the  physical  plane,  then  by  mere 
vacuity  of  affection,  then  by  boredom,  and  even 
nausea.  The  girl,  full  perhaps  of  a  tender  emotion, 
and  missing  the  sympathy  and  consolation  she  ex- 
pected in  the  man's  love,  only  to  find  its  more  mate- 
rialistic side — "This,  this  then  is  what  I  am  wanted 
for;"  the  man,  who  looked  for  a  companion,  finding 


76  love's    COMING-Or  AGE 

he  can  rouse  no  mortal  interest  in  his  wife's  mind  save 
in  the  most  exasperating  triviaHties; — whatever  the 
cause  may  be,  a  veil  has  fallen  from  before  their  faces, 
and  there  they  sit,  held  together  now  by  the  least 
honorable  interests,  the  interests  which  they  them- 
selves can  least  respect,  but  to  which  Law  and  Re- 
ligion lend  all  their  weight.  The  monetary  dependence 
of  the  woman,  the  mere  sex-needs  of  the  man,  the 
fear  of  public  opinion,  all  form  motives,  and  motives 
of  the  meanest  kind,  for  maintaining  the  seeming  tie ; 
and  the  relation  of  the  two  hardens  down  into  a  dull 
neutrality,  in  which  lives  and  characters  are  narrowed 
and  blunted,  and  deceit  becomes  the  common  weapon 
which  guards  divided  interests. 

A  sad  picture !  and  of  course  in  this  case  a  por- 
trayal deliberately  of  the  seamy  side  of  the  matter. 
But  who  shall  say  what  agonies  are  often  gone  through 
in  those  first  few  years  of  married  life  ?  Anyhow,  this 
is  the  sort  of  problem  which  we  have  to  face  to-day, 
and  which  shows  its  actuality  by  the  amazing  rate  at 
which  it  is  breaking  out  in  literature  on  all  sides. 

It  may  be  said — and  often  of  course  is  said — that 
such  cases  as  these  only  prove  that  marriage  was 
entered  into  under  the  influence  of  a  passing  glamor 
and  delusion,  and  that  there  was  not  much  real  devo- 
tion to  begin  with.  And  no  doubt  there  is  truth 
enough  in  such  remarks.  But — we  may  say  in  reply — 
because  two  people  make  a  mistake  in  youth,  to  con- 


marriage:  a  retrospect  77 

demn  them,  for  that  reason,  to  hfelong  suffering  and 
mutual  degradation,  or  to  see  them  so  condemned, 
without  proposing  any  hope  or  way  of  deUverance,  but 
with  the  one  word  "serves  you  right"  on  the  Hps,  is  a 
course  which  can  commend  itself  only  to  the  grimmest 
and  dullest  Calvinist.  Whatever  safeguards  against  a 
too  frivolous  view  of  the  relationship  may  be  proposed 
by  the  good  sense  of  society  in  the  future,  it  is  cer- 
tain that  the  time  has  gone  past  when  Marriage  can 
continue  to  be  regarded  as  a  supernatural  institution 
to  whose  maintenance  human  bodies  and  souls  must 
be  indiscriminately  sacrificed;  a  humaner,  wiser,  and 
less  panic-stricken  treatment  of  the  subject  must  set 
in ;  and  if  there  are  difficulties  in  the  way  they  must 
be  met  by  patient  and  calm  consideration  of  human 
welfare — superior  to  any  law,  however  ancient  and  re- 
spectable. 

I  take  it  then  that,  without  disguising  the  fact  that 
the  question  is  a  complex  one,  and  that  our  conclu- 
sions may  be  only  very  tentative,  we  have  to  consider 
as  rationally  as  we  conveniently  can,  first,  some  of  the 
drawbacks  or  defects  of  the  present  marriage  customs, 
and  secondly  such  improvements  in  these  as  may  seem 
feasible. 

And  with  regard  to  the  former,  one  of  the  most 
important  points — which  we  have  already  touched 
on — is  the  extraordinary  absence  of  any  allusion  to 
these  subjects  in  the  teaching  of  young  folk.     In  a 


78  love's  coming-of-age 

day  when  every  possible  study  seems  to  be  crammed 
into  the  school  curriculum,  it  is  curious  that  the  one 
matter  which  is  of  supreme  importance  to  the  individ- 
ual and  the  community  is  most  carefully  ignored.  That 
one  ought  to  be  able  to  distinguish  a  passing  sex- 
spell  from  a  true  comradship  and  devotion  is  no 
doubt  a  very  sapient  remark ;  but  since  it  is  a  thing 
which  mature  folk  often  fail  to  do,  how  young  things 
with  no  experience  of  their  own  or  hint  from  others 
should  be  expected  to  do  it  is  not  easy  to  understand. 
The  search  for  a  fitting  mate,  especially  among  the 
more  sensitive  and  highly-organized  types  of  mankind, 
is  a  very  complex  affair ;  and  it  is  really  monstrous 
that  the  girl  or  youth  should  have  to  set  out — as  they 
mostly  have  to  do  to-day — on  this  difficult  quest  with- 
out a  word  of  help  as  to  the  choice  of  the  way  or  the 
very  real  doubts  and  perplexities  that  beset  it. 

If  the  pair  whom  we  have  supposed  as  about  to 
be  married  had  been  brought  up  in  almost  any  tribe 
of  savages,  they  would  a  few  years  previously  have 
gone  through  regular  offices  of  initiation  into  man- 
hood and  womanhood,  during  which  time  ceremonies 
(possibly  indecent  in  our  eyes)  would  at  any  rate  have 
made  many  misapprehensions  impossible.  As  it  is, 
the  civilized  girl  is  led  to  the  ''altar"  often  in  uttermost 
ignorance  and  misunderstanding  as  to  the  nature  of 
the  sacrificial  rites  about  to  be  consummated.  The 
youth  too  is  ignorant  in  his  way.    Perhaps  he  is  un- 


MARRIAGE  :   A   RETROSPECT  79 

aware  that  love  in  the  female  is,  in  a  sense,  more  dif- 
fused than  in  the  male,  less  specially  sexual:  that  it 
dwells  longer  in  caresses  and  embraces,  and  determines 
itself  more  slowly  towards  the  reproductive  system. 
Impatient,  he  injures  and  horrifies  his  partner,  and 
unconsciously  perhaps  aggravates  the  very  hysterical 
tendency  which  marriage  might  and  should  have  al- 
layed.* 

Among  the  middle  and  well-to-do  classes  especially, 
the  conditions  of  high  civilization,  by  inducing  an 
overfed  masculinity  in  the  males  and  a  nervous  and 
hysterical  tendency  in  the  females,*  increase  the  diffi- 
culties mentioned ;  and  it  is  among  the  "classes"  too 
that  the  special  evils  exist  of  sex-starvation  and  sex- 
ignorance  on  the  one  hand,  and  of  mere  licentiousness 
on  the  other. 

Among  the  comparatively  uncivilized  mass  of  the 
people,  where  a  good  deal  of  familiarity  between  the 
sexes  takes  place  before  marriage,  and  where  probably 
there  is  less  ignorance  on  the  one  side  and  less  licen- 
tiousness on  the  other,  these  ills  are  not  so  prominent. 
But  here  too  the  need  for  some  sensible  teaching  is 


*It  must  be  remembered  too  that  to  many  women  (though  of 
course  by  no  means  a  majority)  the  thought  of  Sex  brings  but  little 
sense  of  pleasure,  and  the  fulfillment  of  its  duties  constitutes  a 
real,  even  though  a  willing,  sacrifice.    See   Appendix. 

*Thu::  Bebel  in  his  book  on  Woman  speaks  of  "the  idle  and 
luxurious  life  of  so  many  women  in  the  upper  classes,  the  nervous 
stimulant  afforded  by  exquisite  perfumes,  the  over-dosing  with 
poetry,  music,  the  stage— which  is  regarded  as  the  chief  means  of 
education,  and  is  the  chief  occupation,  of  a  sex  already  suffering 
from  hypertrophy  of  nerves  and  sensibility." 


8o  love's  coming-of-age 

clear;  and  sheer  neglect  of  the  law  of  Transmutation, 
or  sheer  want  of  self-control,  are  liable  to  make  the 
proletarian  union  brutish  enough. 

So  far  with  regard  to  difficulties  arising  from  per- 
sonal ignorance  and  inexperience.  But  stretching  be- 
yond and  around  all  these  are  those  others  that  arise 
from  the  special  property-relation  between  the  two 
sexes,  and  from  deep-lying  historic  and  economic 
causes  generally.  The  long  historic  serfdom  of 
woman,  creeping  down  into  the  moral  and  intellectual 
natures  of  the  two  sexes,  has  exaggerated  the  naturally 
complementary  relation  of  the  male  and  the  female 
into  an  absurd  caricature  of  strength  on  the  one  hand 
and  dependence  on  the  other.  This  is  well  seen  in  the 
ordinary  marriage-relation  of  the  com.mon-prayer  book 
type.  The  frail  and  delicate  female  is  supposed  to  cling 
round  the  sturdy  husband's  form,  or  to  depend  from 
his  arm  in  graceful  incapacity ;  and  the  spectator  is 
called  upon  to  admire  the  charming  effect  of  the  union 
— as  of  the  ivy  with  the  oak — forgetful  of  the  terrible 
moral,  namely,  that  (in  the  case  of  the  trees  at  any 
rate)  it  is  really  a  death-struggle  which  is  going  on, 
in  which  either  the  oak  must  perish  suffocated  in  the 
embraces  of  its  partner,  or  in  order  to  free  the  former 
into  anything  like  healthy  development  the  ivy  must 
be  sacrificed. 

Too  often  of  course  of  such  marriages  the  egoism, 
lordship  and  physical  satisfaction  of  the  man  are  the 


marriage:  a  retrospect  8i 

chief  motive  causes.  The  woman  is  practically  sacri- 
ficed to  the  part  of  the  maintenance  of  these  male  vir- 
tues. It  is  for  her  to  spend  her  days  in  little  forgotten 
details  of  labor  and  anxiety  for  the  sake  of  tue  man's 
superior  comfort  and  importance,  to  give  up  her  needs 
to  his  whims,  to  ''humor"  him  in  all  ways  she  can ;  it 
is  for  her  to  wipe  her  mind  clear  of  all  opinions  in 
order  that  she  may  hold  it  up  as  a  kind  of  mirror  in 
which  he  may  behold  reflected  his  lordly  self;  and  it 
is  for  her  to  sacrifice  even  her  physical  health  and  nat- 
ural instincts  in  deference  to  what  is  called  her  "duty" 
to  her  husband. 

How  bitterly  alone  many  such  a  woman  feels !  She 
has  dreamed  of  being  folded  in  the  arms  of  a  strong 
man,  and  surrendering  herself,  her  life,  her  mind,  her 
all,  to  his  service.  Of  course  it  is  an  unhealthy  dream, 
an  illusion,  a  mere  luxury  of  love ;  and  it  is  destined 
to  be  dashed.  She  has  to  learn  that  self-surrender 
may  be  just  as  great  a  crime  as  self-assertion.  She 
finds  that  her  very  willingness  to  be  sacrificed  only 
fosters  in  the  man,  perhaps  for  his  own  self-defense, 
the  egotism  and  coldness  that  so  cruelly  wound  her. 

For  how  often  does  he  with  keen  prevision  see  that 
if  he  gives  way  from  his  coldness  the  clinging  depend- 
ent creature  will  infallibly  overgrow  and  smother  him ! 
— that  she  will  cut  her  woman-friends,  will  throw  aside 
all  her  own  interests  and  pursuits  in  order  to  "devote" 
herself  to  him,  and,  affording  no  sturdy  character  of 


82  love's  COM ING-OF-AGE 

her  own  in  which  he  can  take  any  interest,  will  hang 
the  festoons  of  her  affection  on  every  ramification  of 
his  wretched  life — nor  leave  him  a  corner  free — till  he 
perishes  from  all  manhood  and  social  or  heroic  uses 
into  a  mere  matrimonial  clothespeg,  a  warning  and  a 
wonderment  to  passers  by ! 

However,  as  an  alternative,  it  sometimes  happens 
that  the  Woman,  too  wise  to  sacrifice  her  own  life 
indiscriminately  to  the  egoism  of  her  husband,  and 
not  caring  for  the  ''festoon"  method,  adopts  the  mid- 
dle course  of  appearing  to  minister  to  him  while  really 
pursuing  her  own  purposes.  She  cultivates  the  gentle 
science  of  indirectness.  While  holding  up  a  mirror 
for  the  Man  to  admire  himself  in,  behind  that  mirror 
she  goes  her  own  way  and  carries  out  her  own  de- 
signs, separate  from  him ;  and  while  sacrificing  her 
body  to  his  wants,  she  does  so  quite  deliberately  and  for 
a  definite  reason,  namely,  because  she  has  found  out 
that  she  can  so  get  a  shelter  for  herself  and  her  chil- 
dren, and  can  solve  the  problem  of  that  maintenance 
which  society  has  hitherto  denied  to  her  in  her  own 
right.  For  indeed  by  a  cruel  fate  women  have  been 
placed  in  exactly  that  position  w^here  the  sacrifice  of 
their  self-respect  for  base  motives  has  easily  passed 
beyond  a  temptation  into  being  a  necessity.  They 
have  had  to  live,  and  have  too  often  only  been  able 
to  do  so  by  selling  themselves  into  bondage  to  the 
man.     Willing  or   unwilling,   overworked   or   dying, 


MARRIAGE  :   A   RETROSPECT  83 

they  have  had  to  bear  children  to  the  caprice  of  their 
lords ;  and  in  this  serf-life  their  very  natures  have 
been  blunted ;  they  have  lost — what  indeed  should  be 
the  very  glory  and  crown  of  woman's  being — the  per- 
fect freedom  and  the  purity  of  their  love.* 

At  this  whole  spectacle  of  woman's  degradation 
the  human  male  has  looked  on  with  stupid  and  open- 
mouthed  indifference — as  an  ox  might  look  on  at  a 
drowning  ox-herd — not  even  dimly  divining  that  his 
own  fate  was  somehow  involved.  He  has  calmly  and 
obliviously  watched  the  woman  drift  farther  and  far- 
ther away  from  him,  till  at  last,  with  the  loss  of  an 
intelligent  and  mutual  understanding  between  the 
sexes,  Love  with  unequal  wings  has  fallen  lamed  to 
the  ground.  Yet  it  would  be  idle  to  deny  that  even 
in  such  a  state  of  affairs  as  that  depicted,  men  and 
women  have  in  the  past  and  do  often  even  now  find 
some  degree  of  satisfaction — simply  indeed  because 
their  types  of  character  are  such  as  belong  to,  and 
have  been  evolved  in  accordance  with,  this  relation. 

To-day,  however,  there  are  thousands  of  women 
— and  everyday  more  thousands — to  whom  such  a 
lopsided  alliance  is  detestable ;  who  are  determined 
that  they  will  no  longer  endure  the  arrogant  lordship 
and  egoism  of  men,  nor  countenance  in  themselves 
or  other  women  the  craft  and  servility  which  are  the 
necessary  complements  of  the  relation;  who  see  too 

♦See   "Appendix." 


84  LOVES  COM ING-OF-AGE 

clearly  in  the  oak-and-ivy  marriage  its  parasitism  on 
the  one  hand  and  strangulation  on  the  other  to  be 
sensible  of  any  picturesqueness ;  who  feel  too  that 
they  have  capacities  and  powers  of  their  own  which 
need  space  and  liberty,  and  some  degree  of  sympathy 
and  help,  for  their  unfolding;  and  who  believe  that 
they  have  work  to  do  in  the  world,  as  important  in 
its  own  way  as  any  that  men  do  in  theirs.  Such 
women  have  broken  into  open  warfare — not  against 
marriage,  but  against  a  marriage  which  makes  true 
and  equal  love  an  impossibility.  They  feel  that  as 
long  as  women  are  economically  dependent  they  can- 
not stand  up  for  themselves  and  insist  on  those  rights 
which  men  from  stupidity  and  selfishness  will  not  vol- 
untarily grant  them. 

On  the  other  hand  there  are  thousands — and  one 
would  hope  every  day  more  thousands — of  men  who 
(whatever  their  forerunners  may  have  thought)  do  not 
desire  or  think  it  delightful  to  have  a  glass  continually 
held  up  for  them  to  admire  themselves  in;  who  look 
for  a  partner  in  whose  life  and  pursuits  they  can  find 
some  interest,  rather  than  for  one  who  has  no  interest 
but  in  them ;  who  think  perhaps  that  they  would 
rather  minister  than  be  (like  a  monkey  fed  with  nuts 
in  a  cage)  the  melancholy  object  of  another  person's 
ministrations;  and  who  at  any  rate  feel  that  love,  in 
order  to  be  love  at  all,  must  be  absolutely  open  and 
sincere,  and  free  from  any  sentiment  of  dependence 


marriage:  a  retrospect  85 

or  inequality.  They  see  that  the  present  cramped 
condition  of  women  is  not  only  the  cause  of  the  false 
relation  between  the  sexes,  but  that  it  is  the  fruitful 
source — through,  its  debarment  of  any  common  inter- 
ests— of  that  fatal  boredom  of  which  we  have  spoken, 
and  which  is  the  bugbear  of  marriage ;  and  they  would 
gladly  surrender  all  of  that  masterhood  and  authority 
which  is  supposed  to  be  their  due,  if  they  could  only 
get  in  return  something  like  a  frank  and  level  com- 
radeship. 

Thus  while  we  see  in  the  present  inequality  of 
the  sexes  an  undoubted  source  of  marriage  troubles 
and  unsatisfactory  alliances,  we  see  also  forces  at  work 
which  are  tending  to  reaction,  and  to  bringing  the 
two  nearer  again  to  each  other — so  that  while  differ- 
entiated they  will  not  perhaps  in  the  future  be  quite 
so  much  differentiated  as  now,  but  only  to  a  degree 
which  will  enhance  and  adorn,  instead  of  destroy,  their 
sense  of  mutual  sympathy. 

There  is  another  point  which  ought  to  be  consid- 
ered as  contributing  to  the  ill-success  of  many  mar- 
riages, and  which  no  doubt  is  closely  connected  with 
that  just  discussed— but  which  deserves  separate 
treatment.  I  mean  the  harshness  of  the  line,  the  kind 
of  "ring-fence,"  which  social  opinion  (at  any  rate  in 
this  country)  draws  round  the  married  pair  with  re- 
spect to  their  relations  to  outsiders.  On  the  one  hand, 
and  within  the  fence,  society  allows  practically  the 


86  love's  coming-of-age 

utmost  passional  excess  or  indulgence,  and  condones 
it ;  on  the  other  hand  (I  am  speaking  of  the  middling 
bulk  of  the  people,  not  of  the  extreme  aristocratic  and 
slum  classes)  beyond  that  limit,  the  slightest  familiar- 
ity, or  any  expression  of  affection  which  might  by  any 
possibility  be  interpreted  as  deriving  from  sexual  feel- 
ing, is  sternly  anathematized.  Marriage,  by  a  kind  of 
absurd  fiction,  is  represented  as  an  oasis  situated  in 
the  midst  of  an  arid  desert — in  which  latter,  is  is  pre- 
tended, neither  of  the  two  parties  is  so  fortunate  as  to 
find  any  objects  of  real  af¥ectional  interest.  If  they  do 
they  have  carefully  to  conceal  the  same  from  the  other 
party. 

The  result  of  this  convention  is  obvious  enough. 
The  married  pair,  thus  driven  as  well  as  drawn  into 
closest  continual  contact  with  each  other,  are  put 
through  an  ordeal  which  might  well  cause  the  stoutest 
affection  to  quail.  To  have  to  spend  all  your  life  with 
another  person  is  severe ;  but  to  have  all  outside  per- 
sonal interests,  except  of  the  most  abstract  kind,  de- 
barred, and  if  there  happens  to  be  any  natural  jealousy 
in  the  case,  to  have  it  tenfold  increased  by  public  in- 
terference, is  terrible;  and  yet  unless  the  contracting 
parties  are  fortunate  enough  to  be,  both  of  them,  of 
such  a  temperament  that  they  are  capable  of  strong 
attachments  to  persons  of  their  own  sex — and  this 
does  not  always  exclude  jealousy — such  must  be  their 
fate. 


MARRIAGE  :  A  RETROSPECT  87 

It  is  hardly  necessary  to  say,  not  only  how  dull  a 
place  this  makes  the  home,  but  also  how  narrowing 
it  acts  on  the  lives  of  the  married  pair.  However  ap- 
propriate the  union  may  be  in  itself  it  cannot  be  good 
that  it  should  degenerate — as  it  tends  to  degenerate 
so  often,  and  where  man  and  wife  are  most  faithful  to 
each  other — into  a  mere  egoisme  a  deux.  And  right 
enough  no  doubt  as  a  great  number  of  such  unions 
actually  are,  it  must  be  confessed  that  the  bourgeois 
marriage  as  a  rule,  and  just  in  its  most  successful  and 
pious  and  respectable  form,  carries  with  it  an  odious 
sense  of  Stuffiness  and  narrowness,  moral  and  intel- 
lectual ;  and  that  the  type  of  Family  which  it  provides 
is  too  often  like  that  which  is  disclosed  when  on  turn- 
ing over  a  large  stone  we  disturb  an  insect  Home  that 
seldom  sees  the  light. 

But  in  cases  where  the  marriage  does  not  happen 
to  be  particularly  successful  or  unsuccessful,  when 
perhaps  a  true  but  not  overpoweringly  intense  affec- 
tion is  satiated  at  a  needlessly  early  stage  by  the  con- 
tinual and  unrelieved  impingement  of  the  two  person- 
alities on  each  other,  then  the  boredom  resulting  is 
something  frightful  to  contemplate — and  all  the  more 
so  because  of  the  genuine  affection  behind  it,  which 
contemplates  wdth  horror  its  own  suicide.  The  weary 
couples  that  may  be  seen  at  seaside  places  and  pleas- 
ure resorts — the  respectable  working-man  with  his 
wife  trailing  along  by  his  side,  or  the  highly  respect- 


88  love's  coming-of-age 

able  stock-jobber  arm-in-arm  with  his  better  and 
larger  half — their  blank  faces,  utter  want  of  any  com- 
mon topic  of  conversation  which  has  not  been  ex- 
hausted a  thousand  times  already,  and  their  obvious 
relief  when  the  hour  comes  which  will  take  them  back 
to  their  several  and  divided  occupations — these  illus- 
trate sulBciently  what  I  mean.  The  curious  thing  is 
that  jealousy  (accentuated  as  it  is  by  social  opinion) 
sometimes  increases  in  exact  proportion  to  mutual 
boredom ;  and  there  are  thousands  of  cases  of  mar- 
ried couples  leading  a  cat-and-dog  Hfe,  and  knowing 
that  they  weary  each  other  to  distraction,  who  for 
that  very  reason  dread  all  the  more  to  lose  sight  of 
each  other,  and  thus  never  get  a  chance  of  that  holi- 
day from  their  own  society,  and  renewal  of  outside 
interests,  which  would  make  a  real  good  time  for  them 
possible. 

Thus  the  sharpness  of  the  line  which  society  draws 
around  the  pair,  and  the  kind  of  fatal  snap-of-the-lock 
wath  which  marriage  suddenly  cuts  them  off  from  the 
world,  not  only  precluding  the  two,  as  might  fairly 
be  thought  advisable,  from  sexual,  but  also  barring 
any  openly  afifectional  relations  w-ith  outsiders,  and 
corroborating  the  selfish  sense  of  monopoly  which 
each  has  in  the  other, — these  things  lead  inevitably  to 
the  narrowing  down  of  lives  and  the  blunting  of  gen- 
eral human  interests,  to  intense  mutual  ennui,  and 
when  (as  an  escape  from  these  evils)  outside  relations 


marriage:  a  retrospect  89 

are  covertly  indulged  in,  to  prolonged  and  systematic 
deceit. 

From  all  which  the  only  conclusion  seems  to  be 
that  marriage  must  oe  either  alive  or  dead.  As  a 
dead  thing  it  can  of  course  be  petrified  into  a  hard 
and  fast  formula,  but  if  it  is  to  be  a  living  bond, 
that  living  bond  must  be  trusted  to,  to  hold  the  lovers 
together;  nor  be  too  forcibly  stiffened  and  contracted 
by  private  jealousy  and  public  censorship,  lest  the 
thing  that  it  would  preserve  for  us  perish  so,  and  cease 
altogether  to  be  beautiful.  It  is  the  same  with  this  as 
with  everything  else.  If  we  would  have  a  living  thing 
we  must  give  that  thing  some  degree  of  liberty — even 
though  liberty  bring  with  it  risk.  If  we  would  debar 
all  liberty  and  all  risk,  then  we  can  have  only  the 
mummy  and  dead  husk  of  the  thing. 

Thus  far  I  have  had  the  somewhat  invidious  task, 
but  perhaps  necessary  as  a  preliminary  one,  of  dwell- 
ing on  the  defects  and  drawbacks  of  the  present  mar- 
riage system.  I  am  sensible  that,  with  due  discretion, 
some  things  might  have  been  said,  which  have  not 
been  said  in  its  praise ;  its  successful,  instead  of  its  un- 
successful, instances  might  have  been  cited;  and  tak- 
ing for  granted  the  dependence  of  women,  and  other 
points  which  have  already  been  sufificiently  discussed, 
it  might  have  been  possible  to  show  that  the  bourgeois 
arrangement  was  on  the  whole  as  satisfactory  as  could 
be  expected.     But  such  a  course  would  neither  have 


90  LOVE  S  COMING-OF-AGE 

been  sincere  nor  have  served  any  practical  purpose. 
In  view  of  the  actually  changing  relations  between  the 
sexes,  it  is  obvious  that  changes  in  the  form  of  the 
marriage  institution  are  impending,  and  the  questions 
which  are  really  pressing  on  folks'  mind  are:  What 
are  those  changes  going  to  be  ?  and.  Of  what  kind  do 
we  wish  them  to  be  ? 


MARRIAGE 

A  FORECAST 


T  N  answer  to  the  last  question  it  is  not  improbable 
^  that  the  casual  reader  might  suppose  the  writer  of 
these  pages  to  be  in  favor  of  a  general  and  indiscrimi- 
nate loosening  of  all  ties — for  indeed  it  is  always  easy 
to  draw  a  large  inference  even  from  the  simplest  ex- 
pression. 

But  such  a  conclusion  would  be  rash.  There  is 
little  doubt,  I  think,  that  the  compulsion  of  the  mar- 
riage-tie (whether  moral,  social,  or  merely  legal)  acts 
beneficially  in  a  considerable  number  of  cases — though 
it  is  obvious  that  the  more  the  compelling  force  takes 
a  moral  or  social  form  and  the  less  purely  legal  it  is, 
the  better ;  and  that  any  changes  which  led  to  a  cheap 
and  continual  transfer  of  affections  from  one  object 
to  another  would  be  disastrous  both  to  the  character 
and  happiness  of  a  population.  While  we  cannot  help 
seeing  that  the  marriage-relation — in  order  to  become 
the  indwelling-place  of  Love — must  be  made  far  more 
free  than  it  is  at  present,  we  may  also  recognize  that  a 
certain  amount  of  external  pressure  is  not  (as  things 
are  at  least)  without  its  uses :  that,  for  instance,  it  tends 


92  LOVE  S  COMING-OF-AGE 

on  the  whole  to  concentrate  affectional  experience  and 
romance  on  one  object,  and  that  though  this  may 
mean  a  loss  at  times  in  breadth  it  means  a  gain  in 
depth  and  intensity ;  that,  in  many  cases,  if  it  were 
not  for  some  kind  of  bond,  the  two  parties,  after  their 
first  passion  for  each  other  was  past,  and  when  the 
unavoidable  period  of  friction  had  set  in,  might  in  a 
moment  of  irritation  easily  fly  apart,  whereas  being 
forced  for  a  v;hile  to  tolerate  each  other's  defects  they 
learn  thereby  one  of  the  best  lessons  of  life — a  tender 
forbearance  and  gentleness,  which  as  time  goes  on 
does  not  unfrequently  deepen  again  into  a  more  pure 
and  perfect  love  even  than  at  first — a  love  founded  in- 
deed on  the  first  physical  intimacy,  but  concentrated 
and  intensified  by  years  of  linked  experience,  of 
twined  associations,  of  shared  labors,  and  of  mutual 
forgiveness ;  and  in  the  third  place  that  the  existence 
of  a  distinct  tie  or  pledge  discredits  the  easily-current 
idea  that  mere  pleasure-seeking  is  to  be  the  object  of 
the  association  of  the  sexes — a  phantasmal  and  delusive 
notion,  which  if  it  once  got  its  head,  and  the  bit  be- 
tween its  teeth,  might  soon  dash  the  car  of  human  ad- 
vance in  ruin  to  the  ground. 

But  having  said  thus  much,  it  is  obvious  that  ex- 
ternal public  opinion  and  pressure  are  looked  upon 
only  as  having  an  educational  value ;  and  the  question 
arises  whether  there  is  beneath  this  any  reality  of  mar- 
riage which  will  ultimately  emerge  and  make  itself 


MARRIAGE  :   A   FORECAST  93 

felt,  enabling  men  and  women  to  order  their  relations 
to  each  other,  and  to  walk  freely,  unhampered  by  props 
or  pressures  from  without. 

And  it  would  hardly  be  worth  while  writing  on 
this  subject,  if  one  did  not  believe  in  some  such  real- 
ity. Practically  I  do  not  doubt  that  the  more  people 
think  about  these  matters,  and  the  more  experience 
they  have,  the  more  they  must  ever  come  to  feel  that 
there  is  such  a  thing  as  a  permanent  and  life-long 
union — perhaps  a  many-life-long  union — founded  on 
some  deep  elements  of  attachment  and  congruity  in 
character;  and  the  more  they  must  come  to  prize  the 
constancy  and  loyalty  which  rivets  such  unions,  in 
comparison  with  the  fickle  passion  which  tends  to 
dissipate  them. 

In  all  men  who  have  reached  a  certain  grade  of 
evolution,  and  certainly  in  almost  all  women,  the  deep 
rousing  of  the  sexual  nature  carries  with  it  a  romance 
and  tender  emotional  yearning  towards  the  object  of 
affection,  which  lasts  on  and  is  not  forgotten,  even 
when  the  sexual  attraction  has  ceased  to  be  strongly 
felt.  This,  in  favorable  cases,  forms  the  basis  of  what 
may  almost  be  called  an  amalgamated  personality. 
That  there  should  exist  one  other  person  in  the  world 
towards  whom  all  openness  of  interchange  should  es- 
tablish itself,  from  whom  there  should  be  no  conceal- 
ment ;  whose  body  should  be  as  dear  to  one,  in  every 
part,  as  one's  own ;  with  whom  there  should  be  no 


94  love's  coming-of-age 

sense  of  Mine  or  Thine,  in  property  or  possession ; 
into  whose  mind  one's  thoughts  should  naturally  flow, 
as  it  were  to  know  themselves  and  to  receive  a  new 
illumination ;  and  between  whom  and  oneself  there 
should  be  a  spontaneous  rebound  of  sympathy  in  all 
the  joys  and  sorrows  and  experiences  of  life ;  such  is 
perhaps  one  of  the  dearest  wishes  of  the  soul.  It  is 
obvious  however  that  this  state  of  afifairs  cannot  be 
reached  at  a  single  leap,  but  must  be  the  gradual  re- 
sult of  years  of  intertwined  memory  and  affection. 
For  such  a  union  Love  must  lay  the  foundation,  but 
patience  and  gentle  consideration  and  self-control  must 
work  unremittingly  to  perfect  the  structure.  At  length 
each  lover  comes  to  know  the  complexion  of  the 
other's  mind,  the  wants,  bodily  and  mental,  the  needs, 
the  regrets,  the  satisfactions  of  the  other,  almost  as 
his  or  her  own — and  without  prejudice  in  favor  of  self 
rather  than  in  favor  of  the  other ;  above  all,  both  par- 
ties come  to  know  in  course  of  time,  and  after  perhaps 
some  doubts  and  trials,  that  the  great  want,  the  great 
need,  which  holds  them  together,  is  not  going  to 
fade  away  into  thin  air;  but  is  going  to  become 
stronger  and  more  indefeasible  as  the  years  go  on. 
There  falls  a  sweet,  an  irresistible,  trust  over  their 
relation  to  each  other,  which  consecrates  as  it  were 
the  double  life,  making  both  feel  that  nothing  can 
now  divide ;  and  robbing  each  of  all  desire  to  remain, 


MARRIAGE  :  A   FORECAST  95 

when  death  has  indeed  (or  at  least  in  outer  semblance) 
removed  the  other.* 

So  perfect  and  gracious  a  union — even  if  not  alv^ays 
realized — is  still,  I  say,  the  bona  fide  desire  of  most 
of  those  who  have  ever  thought  about  such  matters. 
It  obviously  yields  far  more  and  more  enduring  joy 
and  satisfaction  in  life  than  any  number  of  frivolous 
relationships.  It  commends  itself  to  the  common 
sense,  so  to  speak,  of  the  modern  mind — and  does  not 
require,  for  its  proof,  the  artificial  authority  of  Church 
and  State.  At  the  same  time  it  is  equally  evident — 
and  a  child  could  understand  this — that  it  requires 
some  rational  forbearance  and  self-control  for  its  real- 
ization, and  it  is  quite  intelligible  too,  as  already  said, 
that  there  may  be  cases  in  which  a  little  outside  press- 
ure, of  social  opinion,  or  even  actual  lav/,  may  be  help- 
ful for  the  supplementing  or  reinforcement  of  the  weak 
personal  self-control  of  those  concerned. 

The  modern  Monogamic  Marriage,  however,  cer- 
tified and  sanctioned  by  Church  and  State,  though  ap- 
parently directed  to  this  ideal,  has  for  the  most  part 
fallen  short  of  it.  For  in  constituting — as  in  a  vast 
number  of  cases — a  union  resting  on  nothing  but  the 
outside  pressure  of  Church  and  State,  it  constituted  a 
thing  obviously  and  by  its  nature  bad  and  degrading; 
while  in  its  more  successful  instances  by  a  too  great 

*It  is  curioua  that  the  early  Church  Service  had  "Till  death  us 
depart,"  but  in  IGGl  this  was  altered  to  "Till  death  us  do  part." 


96  love's  coming-of-age 

exclusiveness  it  has  condemned  itself  to  a  fatal  narrow- 
ness and  stuffiness. 

Looking  back  to  the  historical  and  physiological 
aspects  of  the  question  it  might  of  course  be  contended 
— and  probably  with  some  truth — that  the  human  male 
is,  by  his  nature  and  needs,  polygamous.  Nor  is  it 
necessary  to  suppose  that  polygamy  in  certain  coun- 
tries and  races  is  by  any  means  so  degrading  or  un- 
successful an  institution  as  some  folk  would  have  it  to 
be.*  But,  as  Letourneau  in  his  ''Evolution  of  Mar- 
riage" points  out,  the  progress  of  society  in  the  past 
has  on  the  whole  been  from  confusion  to  distinction; 
and  we  may  fairly  suppose  that  with  the  progress  of 
our  own  race  (for  each  race  no  doubt  has  its  special 
genius  in  such  matters),  and  as  the  spiritual  and  emo- 
tional sides  of  man  develop  in  relation  to  the  physical, 
there  is  probably  a  tendency  for  our  deeper  alliances 
to  become  more  unitary.  Though  it  might  be  said 
that  the  growing  complexity  of  man's  nature  would 
be  likely  to  lead  him  into  more  rather  than  fewer 
relationships,  yet  on  the  other  hand  it  is  obvious 
that  as  the  depth  and  subtlety  of  any  attachment 
that  will  really  hold  him  increases,  so  does  such  at- 
tachment become  more  permanent  and  durable,  and 
less  likely   to  be   realized   in  a  number  of  persons. 

*See  R.  F.  Burton's  Pilgrimage  to  El-Medinah  and  Meccah, 
chap.  xxiv.  He  says,  however,  "As  far  as  ray  limited  observations 
go  polyandry  is  the  only  state  of  society  in  which  jealousy  and 
quarrels  about  the  sex  are  the  exception  and  not  the  rule  of  life! 


marriage:  a  forecast  97 

Woman,  on  the  other  hand,  cannot  be  said  to  be  by 
her  physical  nature  polyandrous  as  man  is  polygynous. 
Though  of  course  there  are  plenty  of  examples  of 
women  living  in  a  state  of  polyandry  both  among  sav- 
age and  civilized  peoples,  yet  her  more  limited  sexual 
needs,  and  her  long  periods  of  gestation,  render  one 
mate  physically  sufficient  for  her;  while  her  more 
clinging  ai^ectional  nature  perhaps  accentuates  her  ca- 
pacity of  absorption  in  the  one. 

In  both  man  and  woman  then  we  may  say  that 
we  find  a  distinct  tendency  towards  the  formation  of 
this  double  unit  of  wedded  life  (I  hardly  like  to  use  the 
word  Monogamy  on  account  of  its  sad  associations) 
— and  while  we  do  not  want  to  stamp  such  natural 
unions  with  any  false  irrevocability  or  dogmatic  ex- 
clusiveness,  what  we  do  want  is  a  recognition  to-day 
of  the  tendency  to  their  formation  as  a  natural  fact, 
independent  of  any  artificial  laws,  just  as  one  might 
believe  in  the  natural  bias  of  two  atoms  of  certain 
different  chemical  substances  to  form  a  permanent 
compound  atom  or  m.olecule. 

It  might  not  be  so  very  difficult  to  get  quite  young 
people  to  understand  this — to  understand  that  even 
though  they  may  have  to  contend  with  some  super- 
fluity of  passion  in  early  years,  yet  that  the  most 
deeply-rooted  desire  within  them  will  probably  in  the 
end  point  to  a  permanent  union  with  one  mate ;  and 
that  towards  this  end  they  must  be  prepared  to  use 


98  love's  coming-of-age 

self-control  against  the  aimless  straying  of  their  pas- 
sions, and  patience  and  tenderness  towards  the  realiza- 
tion of  the  union  when  its  time  comes.  Probably 
most  youths  and  girls,  at  the  age  of  romance,  would 
easily  appreciate  this  position;  and  it  would  bring  to 
them  a  much  more  effective  and  natural  idea  of  the 
sacredness  of  Marriage  than  they  ever  get  from  the 
artificial  thunder  of  the  Church  and  the  State  on  the 
subject. 

No  doubt  the  suggestion  of  the  mere  possibility  of 
any  added  freedom  of  choice  and  experience  in  the  re- 
lations of  the  sexes  will  be  very  alarming  to  some 
people — but  it  is  so,  I  think,  not  because  they  are  at 
all  ignorant  that  men  already  take  to  themselves  con- 
siderable latitude,  and  that  a  distinct  part  of  the  un- 
doubted evils  that  accompany  that  latitude  springs 
from  the  fact  that  it  is  not  recognized ;  not  because 
they  are  ignorant  that  a  vast  number  of  respectable 
women  and  girls  suffer  frightful  calamities  and  an- 
guish by  reason  of  the  utter  inexperience  of  sex  in 
which  they  are  brought  up  and  have  to  live;  but  be- 
cause such  good  people  assume  that  any  the  least 
loosening  of  the  formal  barriers  between  the  sexes 
must  mean  (and  must  be  meant  to  mean)  an  utter  dis- 
solution of  all  ties,  and  the  reign  of  mere  licentious- 
ness. They  are  convinced  that  nothing  but  the  most 
unyielding  and  indeed  exasperating  straight-jacket  can 
save  society  from  madness  and  ruin. 


marriage:  a  forecast  99 

To  those,  however,  who  can  look  facts  in  the  face, 
and  who  see  that  as  a  matter  of  fact  the  reaHty  of 
Marriage  is  coming  more  and  more  to  be  considered 
in  the  pubHc  mind  in  comparison  with  its  formaUties, 
the  first  thought  will  probably  be  one  of  congratula- 
tion that  after  such  ages  of  treatment  as  a  mere  for- 
mality there  should  be  any  sense  of  the  reality  of  the 
tie  left;  and  the  second  will  be  the  question  how  to 
give  this  reality  its  natural  form  and  expression.  Hav- 
ing satisfied  ourselves  that  the  formation  of  a  more  or 
less  permanent  double  unit  is — for  our  race  and  time 
— on  the  whole  the  natural  and  ascendant  law  of  sex- 
union,  slowdy  and  wath  whatever  exceptions  estab- 
lishing and  enforcing  itself  independently  of  any  arti- 
ficial enactments  that  exist,  then  we  shall  not  feel 
called  upon  to  tear  our  hair  or  rend  our  garments  at 
the  prospect  of  added  freedom  for  the  operation  of 
this  force,  but  shall  rather  be  anxious  to  consider  how 
it  may  best  be  freed  and  given  room  for  its  reasonable 
development  and  growth. 

I  shall  therefore  devote  the  rest  of  the  chapter  to 
this  question.  And  it  will  probably  seem  (looking 
back  to  what  has  already  been  said)  that  the  points 
which  most  need  consideration,  as  means  to  this  end, 
are  (i)  the  furtherance  of  the  freedom  and  self-depend- 
ence of  women ;  (2)  the  provision  of  some  rational 
teaching,  of  heart  and  of  head,  for  both  sexes  during 
the  period  of  youth ;  (3)  the  recognition  in  marriage 


lOO  LOVE  S  COMING-OF-AGE 

itself  of  a  freer,  more  companionable,  and  less  pettily 
exclusive  relationship ;  and  (4)  the  abrogation  or  mod- 
ification of  the  present  odious  law  which  binds  people 
together  for  life,  without  scruple,  and  in  the  most 
artificial  and  ill-assorted  unions. 

It  must  be  admitted  that  the  first  point  (i)  is  of 
basic  importance.  As  true  Freedom  cannot  be  with- 
out Love  so  true  Love  cannot  be  without  Freedom. 
You  cannot  truly  give  yourself  to  another,  unless  you 
are  master  or  mistress  of  yourself  to  begin  with.  Not 
only  has  the  general  custom  of  the  self-dependence 
and  self-ownership  of  women,  in  moral,  social,  and 
economic  respects,  to  be  gradually  introduced,  but  the 
Law  has  to  be  altered  in  a  variety  of  cases  where  it 
lags  behind  the  public  conscience  in  these  matters — 
as  in  actual  marriage,  where  it  still  leaves  woman  un- 
certain as  to  her  rights  over  her  own  body,  or  in  poli- 
tics, where  it  still  denies  to  her  a  voice  in  the  framing 
of  the  statutes  which  are  to  bind  her. 

With  regard  to  (2)  hardly  any  one  at  this  time  of 
day  would  seriously  doubt  the  desirability  of  giving 
adequate  teaching  to  boys  and  girls.  That  is  a  point 
on  which  we  have  sufficiently  touched,  and  which 
need  not  be  farther  discussed  here.  But  beyond  this 
it  is  important,  and  especially  perhaps,  as  things  stand 
now,  for  girls — that  each  youth  or  girl  should  person- 
ally see  enough  of  the  other  sex  at  an  early  period  to 
be  able  to  form  some  kind  of  judgment  of  his  or  her 


marriage:  a  forecast  ioi 

relation  to  that  sex  and  to  sex-matters  generally.  It 
is  monstrous  that  the  first  case  of  sex-glamor — the 
true  nature  of  which  would  be  exposed  by  a  little  ex- 
perience— should,  perhaps  for  two  people,  decide  the 
destinies  of  a  life-time.  Yet  the  more  the  sexes  are 
kept  apart,  the  more  overwhelming  does  this  glamor 
become,  and  the  more  ignorance  is  there,  on  either 
side,  as  to  its  nature,  No  doubt  it  is  one  of  the  great 
advantages  of  co-education  of  the  sexes,  that  it  tends 
to  diminish  these  evils.  Co-education,  games  and 
sports  to  some  extent  in  common,  and  the  doing  away 
with  the  absurd  superstition  that  because  Corydon  and 
Phyllis  happen  to  kiss  each  other  sitting  on  a  gate, 
therefore  they  must  live  together  all  their  lives,  would 
soon  mend  matters  considerably.  Nor  would  a  rea- 
sonable familiarity  of  this  kind  between  the  sexes  in 
youth  necessarily  mean  an  increase  of  casual  or  clan- 
destine sex-relations.  But  even  if  casualties  did  occur 
they  would  not  be  the  fatal  and  unpardonable  sins  that 
they  now — at  least  for  girls — are  considered  to  be. 
Though  the  recognition  of  anything  like  common  pre- 
matrimonial  sex-intercourse  would  probably  be  for- 
eign to  the  tem.per  of  a  northern  nation ;  yet  it  is 
open  to  question  whether  Society  here,  in  its  mortal 
and  fetichistic  dread  of  the  thing,  has  not,  by  keeping 
the  young  of  both  sexes  in  ignorance  and  darkness 
and  seclusion  from  each  other,  created  worse  ills  and 
suffering  than  it  has  prevented,  and  whether,  by  giv- 


102  LOVE  S  COMING-OF-AGE 

ing  sexual  acts  so  feverish  an  importance,  it  has  not 
intensified  the  particular  evil  that  it  dreaded,  rather 
than  abated  it. 

In  the  next  place  (3)  we  come  to  the  establishment 
in  marriage  itself  of  a  freer  and  broader  and  more 
healthy  relationship  than  generally  exists  at  the  pres- 
ent time.  Attractive  in  some  ways  as  the  ideal  of  the 
exclusive  attachment  is,  it  runs  the  fatal  risk,  as  we 
have  already  pointed  out,  of  lapsing  into  a  mere  stag- 
nant double  selfishness.  But,  after  all,  Love  is  fed 
not  by  what  it  takes,  but  by  what  it  gives;  and  the 
love  of  man  and  wife  too  must  be  fed  by  the  love  they 
give  to  others.  If  they  cannot  come  out  of  their 
secluded  haven  to  reach  a  hand  to  others,  or  even  to 
give  some  boon  of  affection  to  those  who  need  it  more 
than  themselves,  or  if  they  mistrust  each  other  in 
doing  so,  then  assuredly  they  are  not  very  well  fitted 
to  live  together. 

A  marriage,  so  free,  so  spontaneous,  that  it  would 
allow  of  wide  excursions  of  the  pair  from  each  other, 
in  common  or  even  in  separate  objects  of  work  and 
interest,  and  yet  would  hold  them  all  the  time  in  the 
bond  of  absolute  sympathy,  would  by  its  very  free- 
dom be  all  the  more  poignantly  attractive,  and  by  its 
very  scope  and  breadth  all  the  richer  and  more  vital 
— would  be  in  a  sense  indestructible ;  like  the  relation 
of  two  suns  which,  revolving  in  fluent  and  rebounding 
curves,  only  recede  from  each  other  in  order  to  return 


marriage:  a  forfxast  103 

again  with  renewed  swiftness  into  close  proximity — 
and  which  together  blend  their  rays  into  the  glory  of 
one  double  star. 

It  has  been  the  inability  to  see  or  understand  this 
very  simple  truth  that  has  largely  contributed  to  the 
failure  of  the  Monogamic  union.  The  narrow  physical 
passion  of  jealousy,  the  petty  sense  of  private  prop- 
erty in  another  person,  social  opinion,  and  legal  enact- 
ments, have  all  converged  to  choke  and  suffocate 
wedded  love  in  egoism,  lust,  and  meanness.  But  surely 
it  is  not  very  difficult  (for  those  who  believe  in  the 
real  thing)  to  imagine  so  sincere  and  natural  a  trust 
between  man  and  wife  that  neither  would  be  greatly 
alarmed  at  the  other's  friendship  with  a  third  person, 
nor  conclude  at  once  that  it  meant  mere  infidelity — 
or  difficult  even  to  imagine  that  such  a  friendship 
might  be  hailed  as  a  gain  by  both  parties.  And  if  it 
is  quite  impossible  (to  some  people)  to  see  in  such  in- 
timacies anything  but  a  confusion  of  all  sex-relations 
and  a  chaos  of  mere  animal  desire,  we  can  only  reply 
that  this  view  exposes  with  fatal  precision  the  kind 
of  thoughts  which  our  present  marriage-system  en- 
genders. In  order  to  suppose  a  rational  marriage  at 
all  one  must  credit  the  parties  concerned  with  some 
modicum  of  real  affection,  candor,  common  sense  and 
self-control. 

Withal  seeing  the  remarkable  and  immense  va- 
riety of  love  in  human  nature,  when  the  feeling  is 


104  love's  coming-of-age 

really  touched — how  the  love-offering  of  one  person's 
soul  and  body  is  entirely  different  from  that  of  an- 
other person's,  so  much  so  as  almost  to  require  an- 
other name — how  one  passion  is  predominantly  phy- 
sical, and  another  predominantly  emotional,  and  an- 
other contemplative,  or  spiritual,  or  practical,  or  sen- 
timental ;  how  in  one  case  it  is  jealous  and  exclusive, 
and  in  another  hospitable  and  free,  and  so  forth — it 
seems  rash  to  lay  down  any  very  hard  and  fast  gen- 
eral laws  for  the  marriage-relation,  or  to  insist  that  a 
real  and  honorable  aft'ection  can  only  exist  under  this 
or  that  special  form.  It  is  probably  through  this  fact 
of  the  variety  of  love  that  it  does  remain  possible,  in 
some  cases,  for  married  people  to  have  intimacies  with 
outsiders,  and  yet  to  continue  perfectly  true  to  each 
other  and  in  rare  instances,  for  triune  and  other  such 
relations  to  be  permanently  maintained. 

We  now  come  to  the  last  consideration,  namely 
(4)  the  modification  of  the  present  law  of  marriage.  It 
is  pretty  clear  that  people  will  not  much  longer  con- 
sent to  pledge  themselves  irrevocably  for  life  as  at 
present.  And  indeed  there  are  always  plentiful  indi- 
cations of  a  growing  change  of  practice.  The  more 
people  come  to  recognize  the  sacredness  and  natural- 
ness of  the  real  union,  the  less  will  they  be  willing  to 
bar  themselves  from  this  by  a  life-long  and  artificial 
contract  made  in  their  salad  days.  Hitherto  the  great 
bulwark  of  the  existing  institution  has  been  the  de- 


marriage:  a  forecast  105 

pendence  of  Women,  which  has  given  each  woman  a 
direct  and  most  material  interest  in  keeping  up  the 
supposed  sanctity  of  the  bond — and  which  has  pre- 
venied  a  man  of  any  generosity  from  proposing  an  al- 
teration which  w^ould  have  the  appearance  of  freeing 
himself  at  the  cost  of  the  wom^an ;  but  as  this  fact  of  the 
dependence  of  women  gradually  dissolves  out,  and  as 
the  great  fact  of  the  spiritual  nature  of  the  true  Mar- 
riage crystallizes  into  more  clearness — so  will  the  for- 
mal bonds  which  bar  the  formation  of  the  latter  grad- 
ually break  away  and  become  of  small  import. 

Love  when  felt  at  all  deeply  has  an  element  of 
transcendentalism  in  it,  which  makes  it  the  most  nat- 
ural thing  in  the  w^orld  for  the  tw^o  lovers — even 
though  drawn  together  by  a  passing  sex-attraction — 
to  swear  eternal  troth  to  each  other ;  but  there  is  some- 
thing quite  diabolic  and  mephistophelean  in  the  prac- 
tice of  the  Law%  which  creeping  up  behind,  as  it  were, 
at  this  critical  moment,  and  overhearing  the  two 
pledging  themselves,  claps  its  book  together  wdth  a 
triumphant  bang,  and  exclaims :  "There  now  you  are 
married  and  done  for,  for  the  rest  of  your  natural 
lives." 

What  actual  changes  in  Law  and  Custom  the  col- 
lective sense  of  society  will  bring  about  is  a  matter 
v/hich  in  its  detail  we  cannot  of  course  foresee  or  de- 
termine. But  that  the  drift  will  be,  and  must  be,  to- 
wards greater  freedom,  is  pretty  clear.    Ideally  speak- 


io6  love's  coming-of-age 

ing  it  is  plain  that  anything  Hke  a  perfect  union  must 
have  perfect  freedom  for  its  condition ;  and  while  it  is 
quite  supposable  that  a  lover  might  out  of  the  fullness 
of  his  heart  make  promises  and  give  pledges,  it  is 
really  almost  inconceivable  that  anyone  having  that 
delicate  and  proud  sense  which  marks  deep  feeling, 
could  possibly  demand  a  promise  from  his  loved  one. 
As  there  is  undoubtedly  a  certain  natural  reticence  in 
sex,  so  perhaps  the  most  decent  thing  in  true  Mar- 
riage would  be  to  say  nothing,  make  no  promises — 
either  for  a  year  or  a  lifetime.  Promises  are  bad  at 
any  time,  and  when  the  heart  is  full  silence  befits  it 
best.  Practically,  however,  since  a  love  of  this  kind  is 
slow  to  be  realized,  since  social  custom  is  slow  to 
change,  and  since  the  partial  dependence  and  slavery 
of  Woman  must  yet  for  a  while  continue,  it  is  likely  for 
such  period  that  formal  contracts  of  some  kind  will 
still  be  made;  only  these  (it  may  be  hoped)  will  loie 
their  irrevocable  and  rigid  character,  and  become  in 
some  degree  adapted  to  the  needs  of  the  contracting 
parties. 

Such  contracts  might,  of  course,  if  adopted,  be 
very  various  in  respect  to  conjugal  rights,  conditions 
of  termination,  division  of  property,  responsibility  for 
and  rights  over  children,  etc.  In  some  cases*  possibly 
they  might  be  looked  upon  as  preliminary  to  a  later 
and  more  permanent  alliance;  in  others  they  would 

♦See   "Appendix." 


marriage:  a  forecast  107 

provide,  for  disastrous  marriages,  a  remedy  free  from 
the  inordinate  scandals  of  the  present  Divorce  Courts. 
It  may  however  be  said  that  rather  than  adopt  any 
new  system  of  contracts,  pubHc  opinion  in  this  coun- 
try would  tend  to  a  simple  facilitation  of  Divorce,  and 
that  if  the  latter  were  made  (with  due  provision  for  the 
children)  to  depend  on  mutual  consent,  it  would  be- 
come little  more  than  an  affair  of  registration,  and  the 
scandals  of  the  proceeding  would  be  avoided.  In  any 
case  we  think  that  marriage-contracts,  if  existing  at 
all,  must  tend  more  and  more  to  become  matters  of 
private  arrangement  as  far  as  the  relations  of  husband 
and  wife  are  concerned,  and  that  this  is  likely  to  hap- 
pen in  proportion  as  woman  becomes  more  free,  and 
therefore  more  competent  to  act  in  her  own  right.  It 
would  be  felt  intolerable,  in  any  decently  constituted 
society,  that  the  old  blunderbuss  of  the  Law  should  in- 
terfere in  the  delicate  relations  of  wedded  life.  As  it 
is  to-day  the  situation  is  most  absurd.  On  the  one 
hand,  having  been  constituted  from  times  back  in  fa- 
vor of  the  male,  the  Law  still  gives  to  the  husband 
barbarous  rights  over  the  person  of  his  spouse;  on 
the  other  hand,  to  compensate  for  this,  it  rushes  in 
with  the  farcicalities  of  Breach  of  Promise ;  and  in  any 
case,  having  once  pronounced  its  benediction  over  a 
pair — how  hateful  the  alliance  may  turn  out  to  be  to 
both  parties,  and  however  obvious  its  failure  to  the 
whole  world — the  stupid  old  thing  blinks  owlishly  on 


io8  love's  coming-of-age 

at  its  own  work,  and  professes  itself  totally  unable  to 
undo  the  knot  which  once  it  tied ! 

The  only  point  where  there  is  a  permanent  ground 
for  State-interference — and  where  indeed  there  is  no 
doubt  that  the  public  authority  should  in  some  way 
make  itself  felt^s  in  the  matter  of  the  children  re- 
sulting from  any  alliance.  Here  the  relation  of  the 
pair  ceases  to  be  private  and  becomes  social ;  and  the 
interests  of  the  child  itself,  and  of  the  nation  whose 
future  citizen  the  child  is,  have  to  be  safe-guarded. 
Any  contracts,  or  any  proposals  of  divorce,  before 
they  could  be  sanctioned  by  the  public  authority, 
would  have  to  contain  satisfactory  provisions  for  the., 
care  and  maintenance  of  the  children  in  such  casual- 
ties as  might  ensue ;  nor  ought  there  to  be  maintained 
any  legal  distinction  between  'natural'  and  'legitimate' 
children,  since  it  is  clear  that  whatever  individuals  or 
society  at  large  may,  in  the  former  case,  think  of  the 
conduct  of  the  parents,  no  disability  should  on  that 
account  accrue  to  the  child,  nor  should  the  parents  (if 
identifiable)  be  able  to  escape  their  full  responsibility 
for  bringing  it  into  the  world.  If  those  good  people 
who  make  such  a  terrible  outcry  against  folk  entering 
into  married  life  without  going  through  all  the  abra- 
cadabra of  the  Law,  on  account  of  the  children,  would 
try  and  get  the  law  altered  so  as  to  give  illegitimate 
children  the  same  status  and  claim  on.  their  parents 
as  legitimate  children,  it  would  show  more  genuinely 


marriage:  a  forecast  109 

for  their  anxiety  about  the  children,  and  would  really 
be  doing  something  in  the  interests  of  positive  moral- 
ity. 

If  it  be  objected  that  private  contracts,  or  such  fa- 
cilitations of  Divorce  as  here  spoken  of,  would  simply 
lead  to  frivolous  experimental  relationships  entered 
into  and  broken-off  ad  infinitum,  it  must  be  remem- 
bered that  the  responsibility  for  due  rearing  and  main- 
tenance of  children  must  give  serious  pause  to  such  a 
career;  and  that  to  suppose  that  any  great  mass  of 
the  people  would  find  their  good  in  a  kind  of  matri- 
monial game  of  General  Post  is  to  suppose  that  the 
mass  of  the  people  have  really  never  acquired  or  been 
taught  the  rudiments  of  common  sense  in  such  mat- 
ters— is  to  suppose  a  case  for  which  there  w^ould  hardly 
be  a  parallel  in  the  customs  of  any  nation  or  tribe 
that  we  know  of. 

In  conclusion,  it  is  evident  that  no  very  great 
change  for  the  better  in  marriage-relations  can  take 
place  except  as  the  accompaniment  of  deep-lying 
changes  in  Society  at  large;  and  that  alterations  in 
the  Law  alone  will  effect  but  a  limited  improvement. 
Indeed  it  is  not  very  likely,  as  long  as  the  present  com- 
mercial order  of  society  lasts,  that  the  existing  Mar- 
riage-laws— founded  as  they  are  on  the  idea  of  prop- 
erty— will  be  very  radically  altered,  though  they  may 
be  to  some  extent.  More  likely  is  it  that,  underneath 
the  law,  the  common  practice  will  slide  forward  into 


no  LOVE  S  COMING-OF-AGE 

newer  customs.  With  the  rise  of  the  new  society, 
which  is  already  outHning  itself  within  the  structure  of 
the  old,  many  of  the  difficulties  and  bugbears,  that  at 
present  seem  to  stand  in  the  way  of  a  more  healthy  re- 
lation between  the  sexes,  will  of  themselves  disappear. 
It  must  be  acknowledged,  however,  that  though  a 
gradual  broadening  out  and  humanizing  of  Law  and 
Custom  are  quite  necessary,  it  cannot  fairly  be  charged 
against  these  ancient  tyrants  that  they  are  responsible 
for  all  the  troubles  connected  with  sex.  There  are 
millions  of  people  to-day  who  never  could  marry  hap- 
pily— however  favorable  the  conditions  might  be — 
simply  because  their  natures  do  not  contain  in  suffi- 
cient strength  the  elements  of  loving  surrender  to  an- 
other; and,  as  long  as  the  human  heart  is  what  it  is, 
there  will  be  natural  tragedies  arising  from  the 
willingness  or  unwillingness  of  one  person  to 
release  another  when  the  former  finds  th^t  his 
or  her  love  is  not  returned.*  While  it  is 
quite  necessary  that  these  natural  tragedies  should 
not  be  complicated  and  multiplied  by  needless  legal 
interference — complicated  into  the  numberless  artifi- 

*Perhaps  one  of  the  most  sombre  and  inscrutable  of  these  natural 
tragedies  lies,  for  Woman,  in  the  fact  that  the  man  to  whom  she 
first  suri'enders  her  body  often  acquires  for  her  (whatever  his 
character  may  be)  so  profound  and  inalienable  a  claim  upon  her 
heart.  While,  either  for  man  or  woman,  it  is  almost  impossible  to 
thoroughly  understand  their  own  nature,  or  that  of  others,  till  they 
have  had  sex-experience,  it  happens  so  that  in  the  case  of  woman 
the  experience  which  should  thus  give  the  power  of  choice  is  fre- 
quently the  very  one  which  seals  her  destiny.  It  reveals  to  her, 
as  at  a  glance,  the  tragedy  of  a  life-time  which  lies  before  her,  and 
yet  which  she  cannot  do  other  than  accept. 


marriage:  a  forecast  hi 

clal  tragedies  which  are  so  exasperating  wlien  repre- 
sented on  the  stage  or  in  romance,  and  so  saddening 
when  witnessed  in  real  Hfe — still  we  may  acknowledge 
that,  short  of  the  millennium,  they  will  always  be  with 
us,  and  that  no  institution  of  marriage  alone,  or  ab- 
sence of  institution,  will  rid  us  of  them.  That  entire 
and  unswerving  refusal  to  'cage'  another  person,  or  to 
accept  an  affection  not  perfectly  free  and  spontaneous, 
which  will,  we  are  fain  to  think,  be  always  more  and 
more  the  mark  of  human  love,  must  inevitably  bring 
its  own  price  of  mortal  suffering  with  it ;  yet  the  Love 
so  gained,  whether  in  the  individual  or  in  society,  will 
be  found  in  the  end  to  be  worth  the  pang — and  as  far 
beyond  the  other  love,  as  is  the  wild  bird  of  Paradise 
that  comes  to  feed  out  of  our  hands  unbidden  more 
lovely  than  the  prisoner  we  shut  with  draggled  wings 
behind  the  bars.  Love  is  doubtless  the  last  and  most 
diflficult  lesson  that  humanity  has  to  learn ;  in  a  sense 
it  underlies  all  the  others.  Perhaps  the  time  has  come 
for  the  modern  nations  when,  ceasing  to  be  children, 
they  may  even  try  to  learn  it. 


THE  FREE  SOCIETY 


nPAKING,  finally,  a  somewhat  wider  outlook  over 
^     the  whole  subject  of  the  most  intimate  human 
relations  than  was  feasible  in  the  foregoing  chapters, 
we  may  make  a  few  general  remarks. 

One  of  the  great  difficulties  in  the  way  of  arriving 
at  any  general  understanding  on  questions  of  sex — 
and  one  which  we  have  already  had  occasion  to  note 
— is  the  extraordinary  diversity  of  feeling  and  tem- 
perament w^hich  exists  in  these  matters.  Needless  to 
say,  this  is  increased  by  the  reserve,  natural  or  artifi- 
cial, which  so  seldom  allows  people  to  express  their 
sentiments  quite  freely.  In  the  great  ocean'^there  are 
so  many  currents,  cold  and  warm,  fresh,  and  salt,  and 
brackish;  and  each  one  thinks  that  the  current  in 
which  he  lives  is  the  whole  ocean.  The  man  of  the 
world  hardly  understands,  certainly  does  not  sympa- 
thize with,  the  recluse  or  ascetic — and  the  want  of  ap- 
preciation is  generally  returned;  the  maternal,  the 
sexual,  and  the  philanthropic  woman,  are  all  some- 
what unintelligible  to  each  other;  the  average  male 
and  the  average  female  approach  the  great  passion 
from   totally   difTferent   sides,  and  are   continually  at 


THE    FREE    SOCIETY  II3 

odds  over  it ;  and  again  both  of  these  great  sections  of 
humanity  fail  entirely  to  understand  that  other  and 
well-marked  class  of  persons  whose  love-attraction  is 
(inborn)  towards  their  own  sex,  and  indeed  hardly 
recognize  the  existence  of  such  a  class,  although  as  a 
matter  of  fact  it  is  a  large  and  important  one  in  every 
community.  In  fact,  all  these  differences  have  hith- 
erto been  so  little  the  subject  of  impartial  study  that 
we  are  still  amazingly  in  the  dark  about  them. 

When  we  look  back  to  History,  and  the  various 
customs  of  the  world  in  different  races  and  tribes  and 
at  different  periods  of  time,  we  seem  to  see  these  nat- 
ural divergencies  of  human  temperament  reflected  in 
the  extraordinary  diversity  of  practices  that  have  ob- 
tained and  been  recognized.  We  see  that,  in  some 
cases,  the  worship  of  sex  took  its  place  beside  the 
worship  of  the  gods ;  and — what  appears  equally 
strange — that  the  orgiastic  rites  and  saturnalia  of  the 
early  world  were  intimately  connected  with  religious 
feeling;  we  find  that,  in  other  cases,  asceticism  and 
chastity  and  every  denial  of  the  flesh  were  glorified 
and  looked  upon  as  providing  the  only  way  to  the 
heavenly  kingdom;  we  discover  that  marriage  has 
been  instituted  and  defined  and  sanctioned  in  endless 
forms,  each  looked  upon  as  the  only  moral  and  pos- 
sible form  in  its  own  time  and  country;  and  that  the 
position  of  women  under  these  different  conditions  has 
varied  in  the  most  remarkable  way — that  in  some  of 


114  LOVES  COMING-OF-AGE 

the  primitive  societies  where  group-marriages*  of  one 
kind  or  another  prevailed  their  dignity  and  influence 
were  of  the  highest,  that  under  some  forms  of  Monog- 
amy, as  among  the  Nagas  of  Bengal,**  women  have 
been  abjectly  degraded,  while  under  other  forms,  as  in 
Ancient  Egypt  and  the  later  Roman  Empire,  they 
have  been  treated  with  respect;  and  so  forth.  We 
cannot  fail,  I  say,  to  recognize  the  enormous  diversity 
of  practice  which  has  existed  over  the  world  in  this 
matter  of  the  relations  of  the  sexes;  nor,  I  may  add, 
can  we  venrture — if  we  possess  any  sense  of  humanity 
— to  put  our  finger  down  finally  on  any  one  custom 
or  institution,  and  say,  Here  alone  is  the  right  way. 

On  the  contrary,  it  seems  to  me  probable  that, 
broadly  speaking,  a  really  free  Society  will  accept  and 
make  use  of  all  that  has  gone  before.  If,  as  we  have 
suggested,  historical  forms  and  customs  are  the  indi- 
cation of  tendencies  and  instincts  w^hich  still  exist 
among  us,  then  the  question  is,  not  the  extinction  of 
these  tendencies,  but  the  finding  of  the  right  place  and 
really  rational  expression  for  them.  That  the  various 
customs  of  past  social  fife  do  subsist  on  beneath  the 
surface  of  modern  society,  we  know  well  enough ;  and 
it  seems  likely  that  society  in  the  future  will  have^  to 
recognize  and  to  a  certain  extent  transform  these.    In 

♦See  note  on  the  Primitive  Group-marriage,    infra. 

♦Letourneau  ("Evolution  of  Marriage,"  p.  173)  mentions  also 
amng  the  inferior  races  who  have  adopted  Monogamy  the  Veddahs 
of  Ceylon,  the  Bochimans  of  S.  Africa,  and  the  Kurnaiis  of  Australia. 


THE  FREE  SOCIETY  II5 

fact,  in  recognizing  it  will  inevitably  transform,  for  it 
will  bring  them  out  from  darkness  into  light,  and  from 
the  old  conditions  and  surroundings  of  the  past  so- 
cieties into  the  new  conditions  of  the  modern.  Polyg- 
amy, for  instance,  or  some  related  form  of  union,  sup- 
posing it  really  did  spontaneously  and  naturally  arise 
in  a  society  which  gave  perfect  freedom  and  inde- 
pendence to  women  in  their  relation  to  men,  would  be 
completely  different  in  character  from  the  old-world 
polygamy,  and  would  cease  to  act  as  a  degrading  in- 
fluence on  women,  since  it  would  be  the  spontaneous 
expression  of  their  attachment  to  each  other  and  to 
a  common  husband;  Monogamy,  under  similar  cir- 
cumstances, would  lose  its  narrowness  and  stuffiness ; 
and  the  life  of  the  Hetaira,  that  is  of  the  woman  who 
chooses  to  be  the  companion  of  more  than  one  man, 
might  not  be  without  dignity,  honor,  and  sincere  at- 
tachment. 

Again  it  is  easy  to  see,  if  the  sense  of  cleanness  in 
sex  ever  does  come  in,  if  the  physical  body  ever  be- 
comes clean  (which  it  certainly  is  not  now-a-days), 
clean  and  beautiful  and  accepted,  within  and  without 
— and  this  of  course  it  can  only  be  through  a  totally 
changed  method  of  life,  through  pure  and  clean  food, 
nakedness  to  a  large  extent,  and  a  kind  of  saturation 
with  the  free  air  and  light  of  heaven ;  and  if  the  mental 
and  moral  relation  ever  becomes  clean,  which  can  only 
be  with  the  freedom  of  woman  and  the  sincerity  of 


ii6  love's  coming-of-age 

man,  and  so  forth;  it  is  easy  to  see  how  entirely  all 
this  would  alter  our  criticism  of  the  various  sex-rela- 
tions, and  our  estimate  of  their  place  and  fitness. 

In  the  wild  and  even  bacchanalian  festivals  of  all 
the  earlier  nations,  there  was  an  element  of  Nature- 
sex-mysticism  which  has  become  lost  in  modern  times, 
or  quite  unclean  and  depraved ;  yet  we  cannot  but  see 
that  this  element  is  a  vital  and  deep-lying  one  in  hu- 
manity, and  in  some  form  or  other  will  probably  reas- 
sert itself.  On  the  other  hand,  in  the  Monkish  and 
other  ascetic  movements  of  Christian  or  pre-Christian 
times,  with  their  efforts  towards  a  proud  ascer^dancy 
over  the  body,  there  was  (commonly  sneered  at  though 
it  may  be  in  the  modern  West)  an  equally  vital  and 
important  truth,*  which  will  have  to  be  rehabilitated. 
The  practices  of  former  races  and  times,  however  an- 
omalous they  may  sometimes  appear  to  us,  were  after 
all  in  the  main  the  expression  of  needs  and  desires 
which  had  their  place  in  human  nature,  and  which  still 
for  the  most  part  have  their  place  there,  even  though 
overlaid  and  suppressed  beneath  existing  convention ; 
and  who  knows,  in  all  the  stifled  longings  of  thousands 
and  thousands  of  hearts,  how  the  great  broad  soul  of 
Humanity — which  reaches  to  and  accepts  all  times 
and  races — is  still  ever  asserting  herself  and  swelling 
against  the  petty  bonds  of  this  or  that  age?  The 
nearer  Society  comes  to  its  freedom  and  majority  the 

*See  Remarks  on  the  Early  Star  and  Sex  Worships,   infra. 


THE   FREE  SOCIETY  II7 

more  lovingly  will  it  embrace  this  great  soul  within 
it,  and  recognizing  in  all  the  customs  of  the  past  the 
partial  efforts  of  that  soul  to  its  own  fulfillment  will 
refuse  to  deny  them,  but  rather  seek,  by  acceptance 
and  reunion,  to  transform  and  illlumine  them  all. 

Possibly,  to  some,  these  remarks  will  only  suggest 
a  return  to  general  confusion  and  promiscuity ;  and  of, 
course  to  such  people  they  wall  seem  inconsistent  with 
what  has  been  said  before  on  the  subject  of  the  real 
Marriage  and  the  tendency  of  human  beings,  as  so- 
ciety evolves,  to  seek  more  and  more  sincerely  a  life- 
long union  wath  their  chosen  mate ;  but  no  one  who 
thinks  twice  about  the  matter  could  well  make  this 
mistake.  For  the  latter  tendency,  that  namely  "from 
confusion  to  distinction,"  is  in  reality  the  tendency 
of  all  evolution,  and  cannot  be  set  aside.  It  is  in  the 
very  nature  of  Love  that  as  it  realizes  its  own  aim  it 
should  rivet  always  more  and  more  towards  a  durable 
and  distinct  relationship,  nor  rest  till  the  permanent 
mate  and  equal  is  found.  As  human  beings  progress 
their  relations  to  each  other  must  become  much  more 
definite  and  distinct  instead  of  less  so — and  there  is  no 
likelihood  of  society  in  its  onward  march  lapsing  back- 
ward, so  to  speak,  to  formlessness  again 

But  it  is  just  the  advantage  of  this  onward  move- 
ment towards  definiteness  that  it  allows — as  in  the 
evolution  of  all  organic  life — of  more  and  more  differ- 
entiation as  the  life  rises  higher  in  the  scale  of  exist- 


ii8  love's  coming-of-age 

ence.  If  society  should  at  any  future  time  recognize 
— as  we  think  Hkely  it  will  do — the  variety  of  needs  of 
the  human  heart  and  of  human  beings,  it  will  not 
therefore  confuse  them,  but  will  see  that  these  differ- 
ent needs  indicate  different  functions,  all  of  which 
may  have  their  place  and  purpose.  If  it  has  the  good 
sense  to  tolerate  a  Nature-festival  now  and  then,  and 
a  certain  amount  of  animalism  let  loose,  it  will  not  be 
so  foolish  as  to  be  unable  to  distinguish  this  from  the 
deep  delight  and  happiness  of  a  permanent  spiritual 
mating;  or  if  it  recognizes  in  some  case,  a  woman's 
temporary  alliance  with  a  man  for  the  sake  of  obtain- 
ing a  much-needed  child,  it  will  not  therefore  be  so 
silly  as  to  mark  her  down  for  life  as  a  common  harlot. 
It  will  allow  in  fact  that  there  are  different  forms  and 
functions  of  the  love-sentiment,  and  while  really  be- 
lieving that  a  life-long  comradeship  (possibly  with  lit- 
tle of  the  sexual  in  it)  is  the  most  satisfying  form,  will 
see  that  a  cast-iron  Marriage-custom  which,  as  to-day, 
expects  two  people  either  to  live  eternally  in  the  same 
house  and  sit  on  opposite  sides  of  the  same  table,  or 
else  to  be  strangers  to  each  other — and  which  only 
recognizes  two  sorts  of  intimacy,  orthodox  and  crimi- 
nal, wedded  and  adulterous — is  itself  the  source  of 
perpetual  confusion  and  misapprehension. 

No  doubt  the  Freedom  of  Society  in  this  sense,  and 
the  possibility  of  a  human  life  which  shall  be  the  fluid 
and  ever-responsive  embodiment  of  true  Love  in  all 


THE  FREE  SOCIETY  II9 

its  variety  of  manifestation,  goes  with  the  Freedom  of 
Society  in  the  economic  sense.  When  mankind  has 
solved  the  industrial  problem  so  far  that  the  products 
of  our  huge  mechanical  forces  have  become  a  common 
heritage,  and  no  man  or  woman  is  the  property-slave 
of  another,  then  some  of  the  causes  which  compel 
prostitution,  property-marriage,  and  other  perversions 
of  affection,  will  have  disappeared;  and  in  such  eco- 
nomically free  society  human  unions  may  at  last  take 
place  according  to  their  own  inner  and  true  laws. 

Hitherto  we  have  hardly  thought  whether  there 
were  any  inner  laws  or  not;  our  thoughts  have  been 
fixed  on  the  outer;  and  the  Science  of  Love,  if  it  may 
so  be  called,  has  been  strangely  neglected.  Yet  if, 
putting  aside  for  a  moment  all  convention  and  custom, 
one  will  look  quietly  within  himself,  he  will  perceive 
that  there  are  most  distinct  and  inviolable  inner  forces, 
binding  him  by  different  ties  to  different  people,  and 
with  different  and  inevitable  results  according  to  the 
quality  and  the  nature  of  the  affection  bestowed — 
that  there  is  in  fact  in  that  world  of  the  heart  a  kind 
of  cosmical  harmony  and  variety,  and  an  order  almost 
astronomical. 

This  is  noticeably  true  of  what  may  be  called  the 
planetary  law  of  distances  in  the  relation  of  people  to 
one  another.  For  of  some  of  the  circle  of  one's  ac- 
quaintance it  may  be  said  that  one  loves  them  cor- 
dially at  a  hundred  miles'  distance ;  of  others  that  the)^ 


I20  LOVE  S  COMING-OF-AGE 

are  dear  friends  at  a  mile;  while  others  again  are  in- 
dispensable far  nearer  than  that.  If  by  any  chance 
the  friend  whose  planetary  distance  is  a  mile  is  forced 
into  closer  quarters,  the  only  result  is  a  violent  devel- 
opment of  repulsion  and  centrifugal  force,  by  which 
probably  he  is  carried  even  beyond  his  normal  dis- 
tance, till  such  time  as  he  settles  down  into  his  right 
place ;  while  on  the  other  hand  if  we  are  separated  for 
a  season  from  one  who  by  right  is  very  near  and  who 
we  know  belongs  to  us,  we  can  bide  our  time,  knowing 
that  the  forces  of  return  will  increase  with  the  separa- 
tion. How  marked  and  definite  these  personal  dis- 
tances are  may  be  gathered  from  considering  how 
largely  the  art  of  life  consists  in  finding  and  keeping 
them,  and  how^  much  trouble  arises  from  their  confu- 
sion, and  from  the  way  in  which  we  often  only  find 
them  out  after  much  blundering  and  suffering  and  mu- 
tual recrimination. 

So  marked  indeed  are  these  and  other  such  laws 
that  they  sometimes  suggest  that  there  really  is  a 
cosmic  world  of  souls,  to  which  we  all  belong — a 
world  of  souls  whose  relations  are  eternal  and  clearly- 
defined;  and  that  our  terrestrial  relations  are  merely 
the  working-out  and  expression  of  far  antecedent  and 
unmodifiable  facts — an  idea  which  for  many  people  is 
corroborated  by  the  curious  way  in  which,  often  at  the 
very  first  sight,  they  become  aware  of  their  exact  re- 
lation to  a  new-comer.    In  some  cases  this  brings  with 


THE  FREE  SOCIETY  I?I 

it  a  Strange  sense  of  previous  intimacy,  hard  to  ex- 
plain ;  and  in  other  cases,  not  so  intimate,  it  still  will 
seem  to  fix  almost  instantaneously  the  exact  propin- 
quity of  the  relation — so  that  though  in  succeeding 
years,  or  even  decades  of  years,  the  mutual  acquaint- 
anceship may  work  itself  out  with  all  sorts  of  inter- 
esting and  even  unexpected  developments  and  epi- 
sodes, yet  this  mean  distance  does  not  vary  during  the 
whole  time,  so  to  speak,  by  a  single  hair's  breadth. 

.  Is  it  possible,  we  may  ask  (in  the  light  of  such  ex- 
periences), that  there  really  is  a  Free  Society  in  an- 
other and  deeper  sense  than  that  hitherto  suggested — 
a  society  to  which  we  all  in  our  inmost  selves  con- 
sciously or  unconsciously  belong — the  Rose  of  souls 
that  Dante  beheld  in  Paradise,  whose  every  petal  is  an 
individual,  and  an  individual  only  through  its  union 
with  all  the  rest — the  early  Church's  dream,  of  an  eter- 
nal Fellowship  in  heaven  and  on  earth — the  Prototype 
of  all  the  brotherhoods  and  communities  that  exist  on 
this  or  any  planet;  and  that  the  innumerable  selves 
of  men,  united  in  the  one  Self,  members  of  it  and  of 
one  another  (like  the  members  of  the  body)  stand  in 
eternal  and  glorious  relationship  bound  indissolubly 
together?  We  know  of  course  that  the  reality  of 
things  cannot  be  adequately  expressed  by  such  phrases 
as  these,  or  by  any  phrases,  yet  possibly  some  such 
conception  comes  as  near  the  truth  as  any  one  con- 
ception can ;  and,  making  use  of  it,  we  may  think  that 


122  LOVE  S  COMING-OF-AGE 

our  earthly  relations  are  a  continual  attempt — through 
much  blindness  and  ineffectualness  and  failure — to  feel 
after  and  to  find  these  true  and  permanent  relations 
to  others. 

Surely  in  some  subtle  way  if  one  person  sincerely 
love  another,  heart  and  soul,  that  other  becomes  a 
part  of  the  lover,  indissolubly  wrought  into  his  being.* 
Mentally  the  two  grow  and  become  compact  together. 
No  thought  that  the  lover  thinks,  no  scene  that  he 
looks  on,  but  the  impress  of  his  loved  one  in  some  way 
is  on  it — so  that  as  long  as  he  exists  (here  or  any- 
where) with  his  most  intimate  self  that  other  is  thread- 
ed and  twined  inseparable.  So  clinging  is  the  relation. 
Perhaps  in  the  outer  world  we  do  not  always  see  such 
relations  quite  clear,  and  we  think  when  death  or 
other  cause  removes  the  visible  form  from  us  that  the 
hour  of  parting  has  come.  But  in  the  inner  world  it 
is  clear  enough,  and  we  divine  that  we  and  our  mate 
are  only  two  little  petals  that  grow  near  each  other 
on  the  great  Flower  of  Eternity;  and  that  it  is  be- 
cause we  are  near  each  other  in  that  unchanging 
world,  that  in  the  world  of  change  our  mortal  selves 
are  drawn  together,  and  will  be  drawn  always,  wher- 
ever and  whenever  they  may  meet. 

But  since  the  petals  of  the  immortal  Flower  are 

•Perhaps  this  accounts  for  the  feeling,  which  so  many  have 
experienced,  that  a  great  love,  even  though  not  apparently  returned, 
justifies  itself,  and  has  its  fruition  in  its  own  time  and  its  own 
way. 


THE  FREE  SOCIETY  123 

by  myriads  and  myriads,  so  have  we  endless  lessons  of 
soul-relationship  to  learn — some  most  intimate,  others 
doubtless  less  so,  but  all  fair  and  perfect — so  soon  as 
we  have  discovered  what  these  relationships  really 
are,  and  are  in  no  confusion  of  mind  about  them.  For 
even  those  that  are  most  distant  are  desirable,  and 
have  the  germ  of  love  in  them,  so  soon  as  they  are 
touched  by  the  spirit  of  Truth  (which  means  the  fear- 
less statement  of  the  life  which  is  in  us,  in  poise 
against  the  similar  statement  of  life  in  others)  ;  since, 
indeed,  the  spirit  of  Truth  is  the  life  of  the  whole,  and 
only  the  other  side  of  that  Love  which  binds  the  whole 
together. 

Looking  at  things  in  this  light  it  would  seem  to  us 
that  the  ideal  of  terrestrial  society  for  which  we  natur- 
ally strive  is  that  which  would  embody  best  these  en- 
during and  deep-seated  relations  of  human  souls ;  and 
that  every  society,  as  far  as  it  is  human  and  capable 
of  holding  together,  is  in  its  degree  a  reflection  of  the 
celestial  City.  Never  is  the  essential,  real.  Society 
quite  embodied  in  any  mundane  Utopia,  but  ever 
through  human  history  is  it  w^orking  unconsciously  in 
the  midst  of  mortal  affairs  and  impelling  towards  an 
expression  of  itself. 

At  any  rate,  and  however  all  this  may  be,  the  con- 
clusion is  that  the  inner  laws  in  these  matters — the 
inner  laws  of  the  sex-passion,  of  love,  and  of  all  hu- 
man relationship — must  gradually  appear  and  take  the 


124  LOVE  S  COIvIING-OF-AGE 

lead,  since  they  alone  are  the  powers  which  can  create 
and  uphold  a  rational  society ;  and  that  the  outer  laws 
— since  they  are  dead  and  lifeless  things — must  inevi- 
tably disappear.  Real  love  is  only  possible  in  the  free- 
dom of  society;  and  freedom  is  only  possible  when 
love  is  a  reahty.  The  subjection  of  sex-relations  to 
legal  conventions  is  an  intolerable  bondage,  but  of 
course  it  is  a  bondage  inescapable  as  long  as  people 
are  slaves  to  a  merely  physical  desire.  The  two  sla- 
veries in  fact  form  a  sort  of  natural  counterpoise,  the 
one  to  the  other.  When  love  becomes  suf^cient  of  a 
reality  to  hold  the  sex-passion  as  its  powerful  yet  will- 
ing servant,  the  absurdity  of  Law  will  be  at  an  end. 

Surely  it  is  not  too  much  to  suppose  that  a  rea- 
sonable society  will  be  capable  of  seeing  these  and 
other  such  things ;  that  it  will  neither  on  the  one  hand 
submit  to  a  cast-iron  system  depriving  it  of  all  grace 
and  freedom  of  movement,  nor  on  the  other  hand  be 
in  danger  of  falling  into  swamps  of  promiscuity;  but 
that  it  will  have  the  sense  to  recognize  and  establish 
the  innumerable  and  delicate  distinctions  of  relation 
which  build  up  the  fabric  of  a  complex  social  organ- 
ism. It  will  understand  perhaps  that  sincere  Love  is, 
as  we  have  said,  a  real  fact  and  its  own  justification, 
and  that  however  various  or  anomalous  or  unusual 
may  be  the  circumstances  and  combinations  under 
which  it  appears,  it  demands  and  has  to  be  treated  by 
society  with  the  utmost  respect  and  reverence — as  a 


THE  FREE  SOCIETY  125 

law  unto  itself,  probably  the  deepest  and  most  inti- 
mate law  of  human  life,  which  only  in  the  most  ex- 
ceptional cases,  if  at  all,  may  public  institutions  ven- 
ture to  interfere  wdth. 

In  all  these  matters  it  is  surprising  to-day  what 
children  we  are — how  we  take  the  innumerable  flow- 
ers and  try  to  snip  and  shape  all  their  petals  and  leaves 
to  one  sorry  pattern,  or  how  with  a  kind  of  grossness 
we  snatch  at  and  destroy  in  a  few  moments  the  bloom 
and  beauty  which  are  rightfully  undying.  Perhaps  it 
will  only  be  for  a  society  more  fully  grown  than  ours 
to  understand  the  wealth  and  variety  of  afifectional 
possibilities  which  it  has  wathin  itself,  and  the  full  en- 
chantment of  the  many  relations  in  which  the  romance 
of  love  by  a  tender  discrimination  and  aesthetic  conti- 
nence is  preserved  for  years  and  decades  of  years  in,  as 
it  w^ere,  a  state  of  evergrowing  perfection. 


REMARKS   AND   NOTES 


SOME  REMARKS 

ON      THE 

EARLY    STAR  and  SEX    WORSHIPS 


THERE  seems  to  be  a  certain  propriety  in  the 
fact  that  two  of  the  oldest  and  most  universal 
cults  have  been  the  worship  of  the  stars  on  the  one 
hand,  and  of  the  emblems  of  sex  on  the  other.  The 
stars,  the  most  abstract,  distant  and  universal  of  phe- 
nomena, symbols  of  changeless  law  and  infinitude, 
before  which  human  will  and  passion  sink  into  death 
and  nothingness,  and  sex,  the  very  focus  of  passion 
and  desire,  the  burning  point  of  the  will  to  live;  be- 
tween these  two  poles  the  human  mind  has  swayed 
since  the  eldest  time. 

With  these  earlier  worships,  too,  the  later  religions 
have  mingled  in  inextricable  but  not  meaningless  en- 
tanglement. The  Passover,  the  greatest  feast  of  the 
Jews,  borrowed  from  the  Egyptians,  handed  down  to 
become  the  supreme  festival  of  Christianity,  and  finally 
blending  in  the  North  of  Europe  with  the  worship  of 
the  Norse  goddess  Eastre,  is  as  is  well  known  closely 
connected  with  the  celebration  of  the  Spring  equinox 


130  LOVE  S  COMING-OF-AGE 

and  of  the  passing  over  of  the  sun  from  south  to  north 
of  the  equator — i.  e.,  from  his  winter  depression  to 
his  summer  dominion.  The  Sun,  at  the  moment  of 
passing  the  equinoctial  point,  stood  3,000  years  ago 
in  the  Zodiacal  constellation  of  the  Ram  or  he-lamb. 
The  Lamb,  therefore,  became  the  symbol  of  the  young 
triumphant  god.  The  Israelites  (Exodus  xii.  14)  were 
to  smear  their  doorways  (symbol  of  the  passage  from 
darkness  to  light)  with  the  blood  of  the  Lamb,  in  re- 
membrance of  the  conflict  of  their  god  with  the  powers 
of  darkness  (the  Egyptians).  At  an  earlier  date — 
owing  to  the  precession  of  the  equinoxes—the  sun  at 
the  spring  passage  stood  in  the  constellation  of  the 
Bull ;  so,  in  the  older  worships  of  Egypt  and  of  Persia 
and  of  India,  it  was  the  Bull  that  was  sacred  and  the 
symbol  of  the  god.  Moses  is  said  to  have  abolished 
the  worship  of  the  Calf  and  to  have  consecrated  the 
Lamb  at  the  passover — and  this  appears  to  be  a  rude 
record  of  the  fact  that  the  astronomical  changes  were 
accompanied  or  followed  by  priestly  changes  of  cere- 
monial. Certainly  it  is  curious  that  in  later  Egyptian 
times  the  bull-headed  god  was  deposed  in  favor  of  the 
ram-headed  god  Ammon ;  and  that  Christianity  adopt- 
ed the  Lamb  for  the  symbol  of  its  Savior.  Similarly, 
the  Virgin  Mary  with  the  holy  Child  in  her  arms  can 
be  traced  by  linear  descent  from  the  early  Christian 
Church  at  Alexandria  up  through  the  later  Egyptian 
times  to  Isis  with  the  infant  Horus,  and  thence  to  the 


STAR    AND    SEX    WORSHIP  I3I 

constellation  Virgo  shining  in  the  sky.  In  the  rep- 
resentation of  the  Zodiac  in  the  Temple  of  Denderah 
(in  Egypt)  the  figure  of  Virgo  is  annotated  by  a 
smaller  figure  of  Isis  with  Horus  in  her  arms;  and  the 
Roman  church  fixed  the  celebration  of  Mary's  assump- 
tion into  glory  at  the  very  date  (15th  August)  of  the 
said  constellation's  disappearance  from  sight  in  the 
blaze  of  the  solar  rays,  and  her  birth  on  the  date  (8th 
Sept.)  of  the  same  constellation's  reappearance.* 

The  history  of  Israel  reveals  a  long  series  of 
avowedly  sexual  and  solar  worships  carried  on  along- 
side with  that  of  Jehovah — worships  of  Baal,  Ashta- 
roth,  Nehushtan,  the  Host  of  Heaven,  etc. — and  if  we 
are  to  credit  the  sacred  record,  Moses  himself  intro- 
duced the  notoriously  sexual  Tree  and  Serpent  wor- 
ship (Numbers  xxi.  9,  and  2  Kings  xviii.  4) ;  w^hile 
Solomon,  not  v/ithout  dramatic  propriety,  borrowed 
from  the  Phoenicians  the  two  phallic  pillars  sur- 
mounted by  pomegranate  wreaths,  called  Jachin  and 
Boaz,  and  placed  them  in  front  of  his  temple  (i  Kings 
vii.  21).  The  Cross  itself  (identical  as  a  symbol  with 
the  phallus  of  the  Greeks  and  the  lingam  of  the  East), 
the  Fleur  de  Lys,  which  has  the  same  signification, 
and  the  Crux  Ansata,  borrowed  by  the  early  Christians 
from  Egypt  and  indicating  the  union  of  male  and  fe- 
male, are  woven  and  worked  into  the  priestly  vest- 


*These  dates  have  shifted  now  by  two  or  three  weeks  owing  to 
the  equinoctial  precession. 


132  LOVE  S  COMING-OF-AGE 

ments  and  altar-cloths  of  Christianity,  just  as  the 
astronomical  symbols  are  woven  and  worked  into  its 
Calendar,  and  both  sets  of  symbols,  astronomical  and 
sexual,  into  the  very  construction  of  our  Churches  and 
Cathedrals.  Jesus  himself — so  entangled  is  the  wor- 
ship of  this  greatest  man  with  the  earlier  cults — is 
purported '''  to  have  been  born  like  the  other  sungods, 
Bacchus,  Apollo,  Osiris,  on  the  25th  day  of  Decem- 
ber, the  day  of  the  sun's  re-birth  (i.  e.,  the  first  day 
which  obviously  lengthens  after  the  2 1st  of  Decem- 
ber— the  day  of  the  doubting  apostle  Thomas  !)  and  to 
have  died  upon  an  instrument  which,  as  already 
hinted,  was  ages  before  and  all  over  the  world  held 
in  reverence  as  a  sexual  symbol. 

I  have  only  touched  the  fringe  of  this  great  sub- 
ject. The  more  it  is  examined  into  the  more  remark- 
able is  the  mass  of  corroborative  matter  belonging  to 
it.  The  conclusion  towards  which  one  seems  to  be 
impelled  is  that  these  two  great  primitive  ideas,  sexual 
and  astronomical,  are  likely  to  remain  the  poles  of 
human  emotion  in  the  future,  even  as  they  have  been 
in  the  past. 

Some  cynic  has  said  that  the  two  great  ruling 
forces  of  mankind  are  Obscenity  and  Superstition. 
Put  in  a  less  paradoxical  form,  as  that  the  two  ruling 
forces  are  Sex  and  the  belief  in  the  Unseen,  the  say- 

*The  d.ite  of  his  birth  was  not  fixed  till  A.  D.  531— when  it  was 
computed  by  a  monkish  astrologer. 


STAR  AND  SEX   WORSHIP  133 

ing  may  perhaps  be  accepted.  To  call  the  two  Love 
and  Faith  (as  Dr.  Bucke  does  in  his  excellent  book 
on  ''Man's  Moral  Nature")  is  perhaps  to  run  the  risk 
of  becoming  too  abstract  and  spiritual. 

Roughly  speaking  we  may  say  that  the  worship  of 
Sex  and  Life  characterized  the  Pagan  races  of  Europe 
and  Asia  Minor  anterior  to  Christianity,  while  the 
worship  of  Death  and  the  Unseen  has  characterized 
Christianity.  It  remains  for  the  modern  nations  to 
accept  both  Life  and  Death,  both  the  Greek  and  the 
Hebrew  elements,  and  all  that  these  general  terms 
denote,  in  a  spirit  of  the  fullest  friendliness  and  sanity 
and  fearlessness. 

A  curious  part  of  all  the  old  religions,  Pagan  or 
Christian — and  this  connects  itself  with  the  above — 
is  Asceticism:  that  occasional  instinct  of  voluntary 
and  determined  despite  to  the  body  and  its  senses. 
Even  in  the  wildest  races,  rejoicing  before  all  things 
in  the  consciousness  of  Life,  we  find  festivals  of  fierce 
endurance  and  torments  willingly  undergone  with  a 
kind  of  savage  glee ;  *  and  during  the  Christian  cen- 
turies— monks,  mystics,  and  world-spiting  puritans — 
this  instinct  was  sometimes  exalted  into  the  very  first 
place  of  honor.  I  suppose  it  will  have  to  be  recog- 
nized— whatever  absurd  aberrations  the  tendency  may 
have  been  liable  to — that  it  is  a  basic  thing  in  human 


♦Note  especially  the  ordeals  through  which  the  youth  of  so  many 
Ravage  races  have  had  to  pass  before  being  admitted  to  manhood. 


134  LOVE  S  COMING-OF-AGE 

nature,  and  as  ineradicable  in  its  way  as  the  other 
equally  necessary  instinct  towards  Pleasure.  To  put  it 
in  another  way,  perhaps  the  ordinary  Hedonism  makes 
a  mistake  in  failing  to  recognize  the  joy  of  Ascen- 
dancy, and  (if  it  is  not  a  ''bull"  to  say  so)  the  pleasure 
which  lies  in  the  denial  of  pleasure.  In  order  to  enjoy 
life  one  must  be  a  master  of  life — for  to  be  a  slave  to 
its  inconsistencies  can  only  mean  torment:  and  in 
order  to  enjoy  the  senses  one  must  be  master  of 
them.  To  dominate  the  actual  world  you  must,  like 
Archimedes,  base  your  fulcrum  somewhere  beyond. 

In  such  moods  a  man  delights  to  feel  his  supre- 
macy, not  only  over  the  beasts  of  the  field,  but  over 
his  own  bodily  and  mental  powers :  no  ordinary  pleas- 
ure so  great,  but  its  rejection  serves  to  throw  out 
into  relief  this  greater ;  no  task  so  stern,  but  endurance 
is  sterner ;  no  pain  so  fierce  but  it  wakes  the  soul  to 
secret  laughter.  If  there  is  something  narrow  in  the 
creed  of  the  ascetic  on  its  negative  side — that  of  denial 
— one  cannot  but  feel  that  on  its  positive  side,  the  es- 
tablishment of  authority  and  kingship,  it  has  a  real 
and  vital  meaning. 

In  another  mood,  however  (equally  undeniable  and 
important),  man  acknowledges  his  delight  in  life,  and 
gives  the  rein  to  his  desires  to  chariot  him  to  the 
extremest  bounds  of  his  kingdom.  The  kiss  of  the 
senses  is  beautiful  beyond  all  and  every  abstraction; 
the  touch  of  the  sunlight,  the  glory  of  form  and  color. 


STAR  AND  SEX   WORSHIP  1 35 

the  magic  of  sweet  sound,  the  joy  of  human  embraces, 
the  passion  of  sex — all  so  much  the  more  perfect  be- 
cause they  are  as  it  were  something  divine  made  actual 
and  realizable.  In  such  a  mood  asceticism  in  any 
form  seems  the  grossest  impiety  and  folly,  and  the 
pursuit  of  the  Unseen  a  mere  abandonment  of  the 
world  for  its  shadow. 

Are  not  these  two  moods  both  necessary — the  great 
rhythmical  heart-beat,  the  systole  and  diastole,  o^  the 
human  soul  ?  The  one,  a  going  forth  and  gathering  of 
materials  from  all  sources,  the  other  an  organizing  of 
them  under  the  most  perfect  light,  or  rather  (it  may 
be  said)  a  consumption  of  them  to  feed  the  most  per- 
fect flame;  the  one  centrifugal,  the  other  centripetal; 
the  one  individual,  the  other  universal ;  and  so  forth — 
each  required  for  the  purposes  of  the  other,  and  mak- 
ing the  other  possible? 

Do  we  not  want  a  truly  experiential  view  of  what 
may  be  called  Religion — derived  from  the  largest  ac- 
tual acquaintance  with,  and  acceptance  of,  all  the  facts 
both  of  mundane  and  extra-mundane  consciousness — 
neither  (like  some  secularists)  denying  the  one,  nor 
(like  some  religionists)  minimizing  or  contemning  the 
other?  And  is  it  riot  possible  that  in  the  early  Star 
and  Sex  worships  we  have  evidence  of  the  attempt  of 
the  human  mind  to  establish  some  such  sane  polarity  ? 


NOTE 

ON  THE  PRIMITIVE  GROUP-MARRIAGE 


/^  NE  of  the  early  forms  of  union  among  human  be- 
^^  ings  appears  to  have  been  that  of  the  Group- 
marriage,  which  was  an  alHance  between  a  group  of 
men  and  a  group  of  women.  It  had  various  forms, 
but  rested  in  general  on  the  fact  that  the  women  in 
primitive  societies  did  not,  on  marriage,  leave  their 
parental  habitation  but  remained  there  and  were  vis- 
ited by  the  men — by  one  man  first,  who  would  come 
with  presents  of  game,  etc.,  from  the  chase,  and  would 
afterwards  bring  his  ''brothers"  or  friends.  Thus  in 
general  a  group  of  ''brothers"  would  come  into  rela- 
tion with  a  group  of  "sisters."  In  such  a  state  of  so- 
ciety, however,  it  is  obvious  that  parentage  would  be 
very  uncertain,  and  the  terms  brother  and  sister  would 
not  always  have  the  stricter  meanings  which  we  give 
them.  Such  a  group-marriage  was  the  "Punalua"  or 
"friend"  marriage  of  Morgan's  North  American  In- 
dians ;  which  is  also  supposed  by  Marx  and  Engels  to 
have  prevailed  at  an  early  time  throughout  Polynesia. 
See  Lewis  Morgan's  "Ancient  Society"  and  Friedrich 
Engels'  "Ursprung  der  Familie." 


THE    PRIMITIVE    GROUP-MERRIAGE  I37 

In  later  times  the  group-marriage  became  restrict- 
ed in  various  directions,  according  to  the  genius  of 
various  races — marriage  of  cousins,  for  instance,  being 
severely  prohibited  among  some  barbaric  tribes,  while 
among  others  all  relatives  (in  the  maternal  line)  were 
barred.  Thus  ultimately,  in  some  quarters,  sprang  up 
a  Pair-marriage ;  which  however  was  only  loosely  de- 
fined ;  which  had  much  of  the  old  group-marriage 
lingering  round  it ;  and  in  which  the  children  still  be- 
longed to  the  woman,  and  descent  was  traced  in  the 
maternal  line  only. 

Under  these  conditions  of  society  the  woman  was 
comparatively  well  off.  Remaining  as  she  did  in  her 
own  gens  or  clan  and  among  her  own  relations,  and 
the  husband  being  as  it  were  a  visitor  from  the  out- 
side, she  was  by  no  means  subject  to  him ;  in  fact,  in 
order  to  gain  access,  he  had  to  make  himself  agreeable 
not  only  to  her  but  to  her  own  family!  She  had  the 
disposal  of  the  children ;  there  was  no  danger  of  their 
being  sequestrated  to  her  husband ;  and  whatever  little 
property  she  had  she  could  leave  to  them ;  to  her  was 
all  the  honor  of  ancestry.  The  husband  on  the  other 
hand,  even  if  he  knew  which  his  own  children  were, 
could  see  little  of  them,  and  could  not  leave  his  pos- 
sessions to  them  without  ahenating  those  possessions 
from  his  clan — which  the  clan-customs  would  not  per- 
mit. Thus  in  marriage  he  practically  had  to  take  the 
second  place. 


138  love's  coming-of-age 

With  the  growth  however  of  property  and  the  sense 
of  property,  there  came  a  time  w4ien  the  men  could 
stand  this  state  of  affairs  no  longer,  and  insisted,  vio- 
lently at  first,  in  carrying  of¥  the  women  and  locating 
them  in  their  own  tents  and  among  their  own  clans — a 
change  rudely  recorded  probably  in  legends  like  the 
Rape  of  the  Sabines,  and  in  all  the  later  customs  of 
Marriage  by  Capture.  And  with  this  change  marriage 
took  on  new  forms.  Women  became  the  property  of 
their  husbands;  they  ceased  to  hold  property  of  their 
own,  in  their  children  or  in  anything  else;  and  descent 
was  traced  through  the  males  only.  In  the  Patriarchal 
system  marriage  was  closely  akin  to  slavery.  Poly- 
gamy and  Monogamy  were  the  two  resulting  institu- 
tions. 

Polyandry  may  perhaps  be  looked  upon  as  a  sur- 
vival of  the  group-marriage  in  a  special  form  adapted 
to  warrior  races  ;  but — as  Engels  remarks — both  Poly- 
gamy and  Polyandry  in  any  strict  sense  can  only  be  re- 
garded as  exceptional  institutions,  since  if  they  were 
general  in  any  one  country,  that  would  imply  a  great 
preponderance  of  one  sex  over  the  other — unless  in- 
deed the  two  institutions  existed  side  by  side  in  the 
same  country,  which  notoriously  never  happens.  As 
a  matter  of  fact  in  oriental  countries  Polygamy  is  con- 
fined to  the  rich,  and  is  so  to  speak  a  luxury,  within 
reach  of  the  few  only. 

Thus  it  would  appear  that  from  the  first,  in  oriental 


THE    PRIMITIVE    GROUP-MARRIAGE  I  39 

countries,  the  practices  of  polygamy  and  monogamy 
were  intermixed.  In  Greece  and  Rome  polygamy 
ceased  to  be  recognized  as  an  institution ;  though  con- 
cubinage in  one  form  or  another  remained.  The 
Monogamic  marriage  became  the  legal  institution ; 
and  the  woman  was  handed  over  to  the  man  as  his 
chattel:  was  bought  symbolically  with  his  money,  in 
the  marriage  ceremony;  and  had  at  first  no  more 
rights  of  her  own  than  a  chattel.  In  the  later  times, 
however,  of  the  Roman  Empire,  with  the  institution 
of  the  dowry  and  the  power  granted  to  women  of 
holding  property,  together  with  the  great  facilities  of 
divorce  allowed,  the  position  of  the  Roman  matron 
became  much  improved.  And  in  modern  European 
countries  the  monogamic  institution  seems  to  have 
passed  or  be  passing  through  somewhat  the  same 
stages  as  in  ancient  Greece  or  Rome, 


ON  JEALOUSY. 


A  GREAT  disturber  of  the  celestial  order  of  Love 
^"^  is  Jealousy — that  brand  of  physical  passion 
which  carried  over  into  the  emotional  regions  of  the 
mind  will  sometimes  rage  there  like  a  burning  fire. 
One  may  distinguish  two  kinds  of  jealousy,  a  natural 
and  an  artificial.  The  first  arises  perhaps  from  the 
real  uniqueness  of  the  relationship  between  two  per- 
sons— at  any  rate  as  it  appears  to  one  of  them — and 
the  endeavor  to  stamp  this  uniqueness  on  the  whole 
relationship,  sexual  and  moral — especially  on  the  sex- 
ual relationship.  This  kind  of  jealousy  seems  in  a 
sense  natural  and  normal,  at  any  rate  for  a  period ;  but 
when  the  personal  relation  between  the  two  parties  has 
been  fully  and  confessedly  established,  and  is  no  more 
endangered,  the  feeling  does  often  I  think  (equally 
naturally)  die  away;  and  may  do  so  quite  well  with- 
out damaging  the  intimacy  and  uniqueness  of  the 
alliance.  This  jealousy  is  felt  with  terrible  keenness 
and  intensity  by  lovers  before  the  consummation  of 
their  passion,  and  perhaps  for  a  year  or  two  after- 
wards— though  it  may  be  protracted  rather  indefinitely 
in  the  case  where  the  alliance,  on  one  side  at  any 
rate,  is  not  quite  satisfactory. 


JEALOUSY  141 

The  other  kind  of  jealousy  rests  on  the  sense  of 
property,  and  is  the  kind  that  is  often  felt  by  the 
average  husband  and  wife  long  after  honeymooning 
days — by  the  husband  not  because  of  his  especial  de- 
votion to  his  partner,  but  because  he  is  furious  at  the 
idea  of  her  disposing  as  she  likes  with  what  he  con- 
siders his  property ;  and  by  the  wife  because  she  is  ter- 
rified at  the  thought  that  her  matrimonial  clothes-peg, 
from  which  depend  all  her  worldly  prospects,  may 
vanish  away  or  become  the  peg  for  another  woman's 
clothes.  This  kind  of  jealousy  is  more  especially  the 
product  of  immediate  social  conditions,  and  is  in  that 
sense  artificial.  Though  probably  not  quite  so  heart- 
rending as  the  other,  it  is  often  passionate  enough,  and 
lasts  on  indefinitely,  like  a  chronic  disease. 

In  early  times,  with  the  more  communistic  feeling 
of  primitive  societies,  and  with  customs  (like  group- 
marriage)  which  allowed  some  latitude  in  sex-rela- 
tion, jealousy  though  strong  was  not  probably  a  very 
great  force.  But  with  the  growth  of  individualism 
in  life  and  in  love,  with  the  rise  of  the  sense  of  prop- 
erty under  civilization  and  the  accentuation  of  every 
personal  feeling  in  what  may  be  called  the  cellular 
state  of  society,  the  passion  became  one  of  fearful  and 
convulsive  power  and  fury ;  as  is  borne  witness  to  by 
numberless  dramas  and  poems  and  romances  of  the 
historical  period.  In  the  communism  and  humanism 
of  the  future,  as  the  sense  of  property  declines,  and  as 


142  LOVE  S  COMING-OF-AGE 

Love  rises  more  and  more  out  of  mere  blind  confusion 
with  the  sex-act,  we  may  fairly  hope  that  the  artificial 
jealousy  will  disappear  altogether,  and  that  the  other 
form  of  the  passion  will  subside  again  into  a  compara- 
tively reasonable  human  emotion. 


ON  THE  FAMILY 


A  CHANGE  somewhat  similar  to  that  in  the  posi- 
-**•  tion  of  Jealousy  has  taken  place  in  the  role  of 
the  Family  during  the  progress  of  society  into  and 
through  the  period  of  civilization.  In  the  primitive 
human  association  the  Family  was  large  in  extent,  and 
in  outline  vague ;  the  boundaries  of  kinship,  in  cases 
where  the  woman  might  have  several  husbands,  or 
the  husband  several  wives,  were  hard  to  trace ;  paternal 
feeling  was  little  or  not  at  all  developed ;  and  the  whole 
institution  rested  on  the  maternal  instinct  of  care  for 
the  young.  In  the  middle  societies  of  civilization,  and 
with  monogamic  arrangements,  the  Family  grew  ex- 
ceedingly dejfinite  in  form  and  circumscribed  in  extent. 
The  growth  of  property  and  competition,  and  the 
cellular  system  of  society,  developed  a  kind  of  war- 
fare between  the  units  of  which  society  was  composed. 
These  units  were  families.  The  essential  communism 
and  fraternity  of  society  at  large  was  dwarfed  now  and 
contracted  into  the  limits  of  the  family;  and  this  in- 
stitution acquired  an  extraordinary  importance  from 
the  fact  that  it  alone  kept  alive  and  showed  in  minia- 
ture (intensified  by  the  darkness  and  chaos  and  war- 


144  LOVE  S  COMING-OF-AGE 

fare  outside)  the  sacred  fire  of  human  fraternity.  So 
great  was  this  importance  in  fact  that  the  Holy  Family 
became  one  of  the  central  religious  conceptions  of  the 
civiHzed  period,  and  it  was  commonly  thought  that 
society  owed  its  existence  to  the  Family — instead  of, 
as  was  the  case,  the  truth  being  reverse,  namely  that 
the  Family  was  the  condensation  of  the  principle 
which  had  previously  existed,  though  diffused  and  un- 
conscious, throughout  society. 

The  third  and  future  stage  is  of  course  easy  to  see 
— that  is,  the  expansion  again  of  the  conception  of  the 
family  consciously  into  the  fraternity  and  communism 
of  all  society.  It  is  obvious  that  as  this  takes  place  the 
family  will  once  more  lose  its  definition  of  outline  and 
merge  more  and  more  again  with  the  larger  social 
groups  in  which  it  is  embedded — but  not  into  the  old 
barbaric  society  in  which  the  conception  of  human 
fellowship  lay  diffused  and  only  dimly  auroral,  but 
into  the  newer  society  in  which  it  shall  be  clear  and 
all-illuminating  as  the  sun. 

Thus  the  Family  institution  in  its  present  form, 
and  as  far  as  that  form  may  be  said  to  be  artificial,  will 
doubtless  pass  away.  Nevertheless  there  remains  of 
course,  and  must  remain,  its  natural  or  physiological 
basis — namely  the  actual  physical  relation  of  the  pa- 
rents to  each  other  and  to  the  child.  One  perhaps  of 
the  most  valuable  results  of  the  Monogamic  family  in- 
stitution under  civilization  has  been  the  development 


THE    FAMILY  I45 

of  the  paternal  feeling  for  the  child,  which  in  primitive 
society  was  so  weak.  To-day  the  love  of  man  and 
wife  for  each  other  is  riveted,  as  it  never  was  in 
ancient  days,  by  the  tender  beauty  of  the  child-face,  in 
Vv^hich  each  parent  sees  with  strange  emotion  his  own 
features  blended  with  the  features  of  his  loved  one — 
the  actual  realization  of  that  union  which  the  lovers  so 
desired,  and  which  yet  so  often  seemed  to  them  after 
all  not  consummated.  The  little  prolongation  of  one- 
self, carrying  in  its  eyes  the  star-look  of  another's 
love,  and  descending  a  stranger  into  the  world  to  face 
a  destiny  all  its  own,  touches  the  most  personal  and 
mortal-close  feelings  (as  well  as  perhaps  the  most  im- 
personal) of  the  heart.  And  while  to-day  this  sight 
often  reconciles  husband  and  wife  to  the  legal  chains 
which  perforce  hold  them  together,  in  a  Free  Society, 
we  may  hope,  it  will  more  often  be  the  sign  and  seal 
of  a  love  which  neither  requires  nor  allows  any  kind  of 
mechanical  bond. 


ON  PREVENTIVE  CHECKS  TO  POPULATION. 


THIS  is  no  doubt  a  complex  and  difficult  subject. 
Nature  from  far  back  time  has  provided  in  the 
most  determined  and  obstinate  way  for  the  perpetua- 
tion of  organic  life,  and  has  endowed  animals,  and 
even  plants,  with  a  strong  sexual  instinct.  By  natural 
selection  this  instinct  tends,  it  would  seem,  to  be 
accentuated ;  and  in  the  higher  animals  and  man  it 
sometimes  attains  a  pitch  almost  of  ferocity.  In  civil- 
ized man  this  efifect  is  further  increased  by  the  intens- 
ity of  consciousness,  which  reflects  desire  on  itself,  as 
well  as  by  collateral  conditions  of  life  and  luxury. 

In  the  animal  and  plant  world  generally,  and  up 
to  the  realm  of  Man,  Nature  appears  to  be  perfectly 
lavish  in  the  matter,  and  careless  of  the  waste  of 
seed  and  of  life  that  may  ensue,  provided  her  object 
of  race-propagation  is  attained ;  and  naturally  when 
the  time  arrives  that  Man,  objecting  to  this  waste, 
faces  up  to  the  problem,  he  finds  it  no  easy  one  to 
solve. 

And  not  only  Man  (the  male)  objects  to  lower 
Nature's  method  of  producing  superfluous  individuals 
only  to  kill  them  ofT  again  in  the  struggle  for  exist- 


PREVENTIVE    CHECKS  I47 

cnce ;  but  Woman  objects  to  being  a  mere  machine  for 
perpetual  reproduction. 

There  are  only  two  ways  commonly  proposed  of 
meeting  the  difficulty :  either  (i)  the  adoption  of  some 
kind  of  artificial  preventatives  to  conception,  or  (2) 
the  exercise  of  very  considerable  continence  and  self- 
control  in  the  face  of  the  powerful  instinct  of  procre- 
ation. Of  course,  also,  the  two  med''ods  may  be  used 
in  conjunction  with  each  other. 

(i)  It  must  be  acknowledged  that  artificial  checks 
to  population  are  for  the  most  part  very  unsatis- 
factory :  their  uncertainty,  their  desperate  matter-of- 
factness,  so  fatal  to  real  feeling,  the  probability  that 
they  are  in  one  way  or  another  dangerous  or  harmful, 
and  then  their  one-sideness,  since  here — as  so  often  in 
matters  of  sex — the  man's  satisfaction  is  largely  at  the 
cost  of  the  woman :  all  these  things  are  against  them. 
One  method  however — that  which  consists  in  select- 
ing, for  sexual  congress,  a  certain  part  of  the  woman's 
monthly  cycle,  can  hardly  be  called  artificial,  and  is 
altogether  the  least  open  to  the  objections  cited.  Its 
success  truly  is  not  absolutely  certain,  but  is  perhaps 
sufficiently  nearly  so  for  the  general  purpose  of  regu- 
lating the  family ;  and  if  the  method  involves  some  self- 
control,  it  does  not  at  any  rate  make  an  impracticable 
demand  in  that  direction. 

(2)  To  adopt  the  method  of  self-control  alone 
without  regard  to  (i)  would  practically  mean,  in  those 


148  love's  coming-of-age 

instances  where  children  were  thought  undesirable,  an 
entire  abstinence  from  actual  intercourse,  and  would 
in  most  cases  be  making  too  great  a  demand  on  human 
nature,  as  well  as,  in  somo,  running  a  possible  risk  of 
prejudice  to  health.  No  doubt  the  danger  of  prejudice 
to  health  has  been  greatly  exaggerated ;  for  as  a  rule  a 
strong  effort  towards  voluntary  continence  is  one  of 
the  best  safe-guards  of  health;  but  it  does  not  follow 
from  this  that  complete  abstinence  is  generally  either 
practicable  or  desirable.  It  may,  however,  be  said 
that  it  is  in  the  direction  of  self-control  rather  than  in 
the  direction  of  unlimited  "checks"  that  we  should 
look  for  the  future ;  and  that  if  some  effort  were  made 
•towards  a  wise  choice  of  the  periods  of  congress,  the 
general  object  in  view  would  be  attained  without  put- 
ting an  inordinate  strain  upon  the  average  human  na- 
ture, and  without  necessitating  recourse  to  doubtful 
and  artificial  devices.  The  effort  itself,  too,  would  lead 
to  that  Transmutation  of  sex-force  into  the  higher 
emotional  elements,  of  which  we  have  spoken  already, 
and  which  is  such  an  important  factor  in  Evolution. 

I  do  not  much  doubt  that,  as  society  evolves,  the 
sex-difHculty  generally — which  has  been  such  a  seri- 
ous one  during  the  civilization-period — wdll  to  a  great 
extent  subside  again.  As  to  excessive  breeding  (which 
of  course  does  not  necessarily  mean  excessive  sex- 
congress)  it  is  probably  a  phenomenon  which  marks 
different  races  during  a  certain  period  of  their  growth 


PREVENTIVE    CHECKS  I49 

and  maturity,  and  which  passes  away  again.  And  as 
to  excessive  sex-desire,  since  the  animals  certainly  do 
not  show  the  inordinateness  of  man  in  this  respect, 
there  is  hope  for  man  too  when  he  comes  to  his  senses ! 
A  cleaner  life,  a  cleaner  diet,  the  habit  of  the  open  air, 
the  growth  of  the  mind  to  wider  interests,  the  growth 
of  Love  itself — all  will  help.  The  two  last-mentioned 
elements  indeed  necessarily  evoke  a  certain  efifort  of 
control  over  the  more  animal  instinct — and  a  kind  of 
conflict,  until  the  two  portions  of  the  nature  are 
brought  into  harmony. 


APPENDIX 


PAGE  7.— "Natural  Reticence." 

Sex  belongs  to  the  Unconscious  or  universal-conscious  re- 
gions of  our  nature  (which  is  the  meaning  perhaps  of  Mod- 
esty), and  will  resume  its  place  there  some  day.  Mean- 
while, having  crept  into  the  Conscious,  it  must  for  the  time 
being  be  sincerely  faced  there. 

PAGE  14. — "To  Teach  the  Child  First,  Quite  Openly,  its 
Physical  Relation  to  its  Own  Mother." 
"It  was  not  without  much  anxiety  that  I  took  the  first 
step  on  a  road  I  intended  to  explore  alone.  Chance  favored 
me.  I  was  in  Java,  and  amongst  my  servants  was  a  dress- 
maker, married  to  the  groom.  This  woman  had  a  dear  little 
baby  with  a  velvety  brown  skin  and  bright  black  eyes,  the 
admiration  of  my  little  daughter,  whom  I  took  with  me  to 
see  mother  and  child,  when  the  baby  was  a  few  days  old. 
While  she  admired  and  petted  it  wonderingly,  I  said  to  her: 
'This  pretty  little  baby  came  out  of  Djahid  like  the  beauti- 
ful butterfly  came  out  of  the  chrysalis,  it  lay  close  to 
Djahid's  heart,  she  made  it,  and  kept  it  there  till  it  grew. 
She  loved  it  so  much  that  she  made  it  grow.'  Lilly  looked 
at  me  with  her  large,  intelligent  eyes  in  astonishment. 
'Djahid  is  very  happy  to  have  this  pretty  baby.  Djahid's 
blood  made  it  strong  while  it  lay  close  to  her  heart;  now 
Djahid  will  give  it  milk,  and  make  it  strong,  till  it  will 
grow  as  big  as  my  Lilly.  It  made  Djahid  ill  and  made  her 
suffer  when  it  was  born,  but  she  soon  got  well,  and  she  is 
so  glad.'  Lily  listened,  very  much  interested,  and  when 
she  got  home,  she  told  her  father  the  story,  forgetting 


152  LOVE  S  COMING-OF-AGE 

nothing.  But  beyond  that,  she  did  not  refer  again  to  the 
matter,  and  soon  forgot  all  about  it.  The  birth  of  Djahid's 
second  baby  gave  me  the  opportunity  of  repeating  the  lit- 
tle lesson.  This  time  she  asked  some  questions.  I  ex- 
plained many  things  to  the  eager  little  listener,  very  sim- 
ply, and  told  her  that  the  mother  kept  the  child  within 
her,  and  took  great  care  of  it  until  it  was  old  enough  to 
endure  the  changes  of  temperature,  etc.,  and  showed  her 
how  a  mother's  joy  and  love  made  her  forget  her  pain.  The 
little  creature,  suddenly  remembering  that  she  must  have 
given  her  mother  pain,  kissed  me  tenderly.  That  was  a 
flower  of  love  and  gratitude,  which  it  was  my  happiness 
to  see  develop  on  the  fruitful  soil  of  truth.  *  *  *  i 
analyzed  a  flower,  I  pointed  out  to  her  the  beauty  of  color- 
ing, the  gracefulness  of  shape,  the  tender  shades,  the  dif- 
ference between  the  parts  composing  the  flowers.  Grad- 
ually, I  told  her  what  these  parts  were  called.  I  showed 
her  the  pollen,  which  clung  like  a  beautiful  golden  powder 
to  her  little  rosy  fingers.  I  showed  her  through  the  miscro- 
scope  that  this  beautiful  powder  was  composed  of  an  in- 
finite number  of  small  grains.  I  made  her  examine  the 
pistil  more  closely,  and  I  showed  her,  at  the  end  of  the 
tube,  the  ovary,  which  I  called  a  'little  house  full  of  very 
tiny  children."  I  showed  her  the  pollen  glued  to  the  pistil, 
and  I  told  her  that  when  the  pollen  of  one  flower,  carried 
away  by  the  wind,  or  by  the  insects,  fell  on  the  pistil  of 
another  flower,  the  small  grains  died,  and  a  tiny  drop  of 
moisture  passed  through  the  tube  and  entered  into  the  little 
house  where  the  very  tiny  children  dwelt;  that  these  tiny 
children  were  like  small  eggs,  that  in  each  small  egg  there 
was  an  almost  invisible  opening,  through  which  a  little  of 
the  small  drop  passed;  that  when  this  drop  of  pollen  mixed 
with  some  other  wonderful  power  in  the  ovary,  that  both 
joined  together  to  give  life,  and  the  eggs  developed  and 
became  grains  or  fruit.  I  have  shown  her  flowers  which 
had  only  a  pistil  and  others  which  had  only  stamens.     I 


APPENDIX  153 

said  to  her,  smiling,  that  the  pistils  were  like  little  mothers, 
and  the  stamens  like  little  fathers  of  the  fruit.  *  ♦  * 
Thus  I  sowed  in  this  innocent  heart  and  searching  mind 
the  seeds  of  that  delicate  science,  which  degenerates  into 
obscenity,  if  the  mother,  through  false  shame,  leaves  the 
instruction  of  her  child  to  its  schoolfellows.  Let  my  little 
girl  ask  me,  if  she  likes,  the  much  dreaded  question;  I  will 
only  have  to  remind  her  of  the  botany  lessons,  simply 
adding,  'the  same  thing  happens  to  human  beings,  with 
this  difference,  that  what  is  done  unconsciously  by  the 
plants,  is  done  consciously  by  us;  that  in  a  properly  ar- 
ranged society  one  only  unites  one's  self  to  the  person  one 
loves.'  "—(Translated  from  "La  Revendication  des  Droits 
Feminins,"  Shafts,  April,  1894,  p.  237.) 

PAGE  16. — "The  Vulgarization  of  Love." 

"I  have  found  in  my  experience  that  those  who  seek  to 
draw  Into  the  selfish  confines  of  their  own  breasts  the  elec- 
tric current  of  Love  are  withered  by  its  force  and  passion. 
The  energy  degrades  to  sensualism  if  it  has  only  the  Indi- 
vidual channel  for  expression.  The  sexual  expression  of 
Love  is  good  and  beautiful  if  normal,  but  It  is  not  so 
infallible  as  the  subtler  intercourse  of  the  soul  and  the 
affections,  or  so  satisfying  as  a  comradeship  in  work  for 
Humanity,  and  a  mental  and  spiritual  aflinity."— Miriam  W. 
Nicol. 

PAGE   24. — "In   the   Beauty   and   Openness   of   Their   Own 
Bodies." 

"All  the  loves— if  they  be  heroic  and  not  purely  animal, 
or  what  is  called  natural,  and  slaves  to  generation  as  in- 
struments in  some  way  of  nature— have  for  object  the 
divinity,  and  tend  towards  divine  beaut3\  which  first  is 
communicated  to,  and  shines  in,  souls;  and  from  them  or 
rather  through  them  is  communicated  to  bodies;  whence  it 
is  that  well-ordered  affection  loves  the  body  or  corporeal 
beauty,  insomuch  as  it  is  an  indication  of  beauty  of  spirit." 


154  LOVE  S  COMING-OF-AGE 

—Giordano  Bruno,  "Gli  Eroici  Furori"  (dial.  iii.  IS),  trans, 
by  L.  Williams. 

"In  Sparta  the  spectacle  of  the  naked  human  body  and 
the  natural  treatment  of  natural  things  were  the  best  safe- 
guard against  the  sensual  excitement  artificially  produced 
by  the  modern  plan  of  separating  the  sexes  from  the  earli- 
est childhood.  The  forms  of  one  sex  and  the  functions  of 
Its  specific  organs  were  no  secret  to  the  other.  There  was 
no  possibility  of  trifling  with  ambiguities."  —  Bebel's 
"Woman,"  Bellamy  Library,  p.  70. 

PAGE  26. — Generation  and  Nutrition. 
"It  is  in  the  almost  homogeneous  fabrics  of  the  cellular 
plants  that  we  find  the  closest  connection  between  the  func- 
tion of  nutrition  a^id  that  of  reproduction;  for  every  one  of 
the  vesicles  which  compose  their  fabric  is  endowed  with 
the  power  of  generating  others  similar  to  itself;  and  these 
may  extend  the  parent  structure  or  separate  into  new  and 
distinct  organisms.  Hence  it  is  scarcely  possible  to  draw 
a  line  in  these  cases,  between  the  nutrition  of  the  individual 
and  the  reproduction  of  the  species."— W.  B.  Carpenter, 
"Principles  of  Human  Physiology,"  sec.  281. 

PAGE  42  —Secondary  Differences  Between  the  Sexes. 

The  following  are  some  of  the  points  of  difference  given 
by  H.  Ellis  in  "Man  and  Woman"  (Contemporary  Science 
Series):— 

The  average  cranial  capacity  of  men  is  greater  than  that 
of  women  (as  would  be  expected  from  the  general  propor- 
tions of  the  sexes);  but  the  difference  in  this  respect  be- 
tAveen  men  and  women  is  greater  in  the  higher  civilized 
races  than  in  the  lower  and  more  primitive. 

Evidence  points  on  the  whole  to  the  cerebellum  being, 
relatively,  distinctly  larger  in  women  than  in  men. 

Intellectually,  women  tend  to  the  personal  and  concrete, 
men  to  the  general  and  abstract. 

Women  endure  pain,  operations,  etc.,  better  than  men, 


APPENDIX  155 

and  show  greater  tenacity  of  life;  men  are  superior  in 
motor  perfection,  sliill,  and  muscle,  lu  delicacy  of  sense- 
perceptions  the  two  sexes  are  about  equal. 

Women  show  in  some  respects  a  greater  affectability  than 
men,  which  is  encouraged  by  their  slight  tendency  to  anae- 
mia, by  the  greater  development  of  their  vaso-motor  sys 
tem,  and  by  the  periodicity  of  their  functions.  They  are 
more  hypnotic,  the  lower— that  is,  the  more  primitive  and 
fundamental— nerve-centers  preponderate  and  are  more  ex- 
citable; hysteria,  ecstasy,  and  suggestibility,  more  marked. 

Men  show  a  greater  tendency  to  race-variation  than 
women;  abnormalities  of  various  kinds,  idiots  and  geniuses, 
are  commoner  amongst  males.  Man  represents  the  radical 
or  experimental  element  in  the  life  of  the  race. 

Woman  represents  the  conservative  element.  She  re- 
mains nearer  to  the  child,  but  for  that  very  reason  is  In 
Bome  respects  more  advanced  than  man,  who,  as  he  grows 
older,  is  "farther  off  from  heaven  than  when  he  wais  a 
boy." 

PAGE  51. — Finesse  in  Woman. 

"The  method  of  attaining  results  by  ruses  (common 
among  all  the  weaker  lower  animals)  is  so  habitual  among 
women  that,  as  Lombroso  and  Ferrero  remark,  in  women 
deception  is  'almost  physiological.'  ♦  *  ♦  But  to  regard 
the  caution  and  indirectness  of  women  as  due  to  innate 
wickedness,  would,  it  need  scarcely  be  said,  be  utterly 
irrational.  It  is  inevitable,  and  results  from  the  constitu- 
tion of  women,  acting  in  the  conditions  under  which  they 
are  generally  placed.  There  is  at  present  no  country  in  the 
world,  certainly  no  civilized  country,  in  which  a  woman 
may  safely  state  openly  her  wishes  and  desires,  and  pro- 
ceed openly  to  seek  their  satisfaction."— H,  Ellis,  "Man 
and  Woman,"  p.  174. 

PAGE  56.— (note).— "7/i(?  Freedom  of  Woman  Must   Ulti- 
mately Rest  on  the  Communism  of  Society." 
"The  reproduction  of  the  race  is  a  social  function,  and 


156  love's  coming-of-age 

and  we  are  compelled  to  conclude  that  it  is  the  duty  of  the 
community,  as  a  community,  to  provide  for  the  child-bearer 
when  in  the  exercise  of  her  social  function  she  is  unable  to 
provide  for  herself.  The  woman  engaged  in  producing  a 
new  member,  who  may  be  a  source  of  incalculable  profit 
or  danger  to  the  whole  community,  cannot  fail  to  be  a 
source  of  the  liveliest  solicitude  to  everyone  in  the  com- 
munity, and  it  was  a  sane  and  beautiful  instinct  that  found 
expression  of  old  in  the  permission  accorded  to  the  preg- 
nant woman  to  enter  gardens  and  orchards,  and  freely  help 
herself."— Havelock  Ellis,  Pamphlet  on  "Evolution  in  Sex," 
p.  15. 

"She  held  it  just  that  women  should  be  so  provided  for, 
because  the  mothers  of  the  community  fulfil  in  the  State 
as  Important  and  necessary  a  function  as  the  men  them- 
selves do."— Grant  Allen,  "The  Woman  Who  Did,"  p.  73. 
PAGE  S7— "Menstrual  Troubles  and  Disturbances." 

There  is  little  doubt  that  menstruation,  as  it  occurs  to- 
day in  the  vast  majority  of  cases,  is  somehow  pathological 
and  out  of  the  order  of  nature.  In  animals  the  periodic 
loss  is  so  small  as  to  be  scarcely  noticeable,  and  among 
primitive  races  of  mankind  it  is  as  a  rule  markedly  less 
than  among  the  higher  and  later  races.  We  may  therefore 
suppose  that  its  present  excess  is  attributable  to  certain 
conditions  of  life  which  have  prevailed  for  a  number  of 
centuries,  and  which  have  continuously  acted  to  bring  about 
a  feverish  disposition  of  the  sexual  apparatus,  and  an 
hereditary  tendency  to  recurrent  manifestations  of  a  dis- 
eased character.  Among  conditions  of  life  which  in  all 
probability  would  act  in  this  way  may  be  counted  (1)  the 
indoor  life  and  occupations  of  women,  leading  to  degenera- 
tion of  the  neuro-muscular  system,  weakness,  and  inflam- 
mability; (2)  the  heightening  of  the  sex-passion  in  both 
men  and  women  with  the  Increase  of  luxury  and  artlflcial- 
ism  in  life;  (3)  the  subjection  of  the  woman  to  the  unre- 
strained use  and  even  abuse  of  the  man,  which  inevitably 


APPENDIX  157 

took  place  as  soon  as  she— with  the  changes  in  the  old 
tribal  life— became  his  chattel  and  slave;  and  which  has 
continued  practically  ever  since.  These  three  causes  acting 
together  over  so  long  a  period  may  well  seem  suthcient  to 
have  induced  a  morbid  and  excessive  habit  in  the  female 
organism;  and  if  so  we  may  hope  that  with  their  removal 
the  excess  itself  and  a  vast  amount  of  concomitant  human 
misery  and  waste  of  life-power  will  disappear. 

PAGE  62.—" Natural  Desires." 
"Although  I  agree  with  Malthus  as  to  the  value  of  virtu- 
ous abstinence,  the  sad  conviction  is  forced  upon  me  as  a 
physician  that  the  chaste  morality  of  women— which  though 
it  is  certainly  a  high  virtue  in  our  modern  States  is  none 
the  less  a  crime  against  nature— not  unfrequently  revenges 
itself  in  the  cruellest  forms  of  disease."— Dr.  Hegerisch, 
translator  of  Malthus. 

PAGE  6j[.—"Thcy  Must  Learn  to  Fight." 
"Women   have   as   little   hope   from    men   as   workmen 
from  the  middle  classes."— Bebel,  "Woman,"  p.  72. 

PAGE  66. — Sexual  Selection  Exercised  by  the  Female. 
"Huuger--that  is  to  say,  what  we  call  economic  causes- 
has,  because  it  is  the  more  widespread  and  constant,  though 
not  necessarily  the  more  imperious  instinct,  produced  nearly 
all  the  great  zoological  revolutions.  *  *  *  Yet  love  has, 
in  the  form  of  sexual  selection,  even  before  we  reach  the 
vertebrates,  moulded  races  to  the  ideal  of  the  female;  and 
reproduction  is  always  the  chief  end  of  nutrition  which 
hunger  waits  on,  the  supreme  aim  of  life  everywhere."— 
"Evolution  in  Sex,"  p.  12. 

PAGE  y2. — "'The  Features  of  a  Grander  Type." 
"Towards  the  Future  I  look  and  see  a  greater  race  to 
come— of  beautiful  women,  athletic,  free,  able  in  mind  and 
logic,  great  in  love  and  in  maternal  instincts,  unashamed 
of  their  bodies  and  of  the  sexual  parts  of  them,  calm  in 
nerve,  and  with  a  chronic  recognition  of  Spiritual  qualities 


158  love's  coming-of-age 

—a  race  of  men,  gentle,  strong,  courageous,  continent,  affec- 
tionate, unselfish,  large  in  body  and  mind,  full  of  pluck  and 
brawn,  able  to  suffer,  clean  and  honest  in  their  animal 
necessities,  self-confident,  with  no  king  or  overseer."— 
Miriam  Wheeler  Nicol. 

PAGE  7^.— 'The  Search  for  a  Fitting  Mate." 

"With  the  disappearance  of  the  artificial  barriers  in  the 
way  of  friendship  between  the  sexes,  and  of  the  economic 
motive  to  sexual  relationships— which  are  perhaps  the  two 
chief  forces  now  tending  to  produce  promiscuous  sexual  in- 
tercourse, whether  dignified  or  not  with  the  name  of  mar- 
riage— men  and  women  will  be  free  to  engage,  unhampered. 
In  the  search,  so  complicated  in  a  highly  civilized  condition 
of  society,  for  a  fitting  mate."— "Evolution  in  Sex,"  p.  13. 
PAGE  79  (note). — Desire  of  Congress  Less  Strong  in  Woman. 

"I  will  mention  here  that  from  various  late  sources  of 
information  I  conclude  that  sexual  insensibility  in  women 
is  much  commoner  than  usually  assumed.  Of  course  I 
mean  by  this,  insensibility  as  from  the  sexual  standpoint: 
of  the  sense  of  pleasure  and  satisfaction  in  congress,  as 
well  as  the  desire  for  congress.  This  desire  is  much  less 
frequent  in  woman  than  generally  supposed.  But  the  soul- 
side  of  love  on  the  other  hand  is  often  more  prominent  in 
females  than  in  males."— A.  Moll,  "Contrare  Sexual-em- 
pfindung,  2nd  edn.,  p.  325. 

PAGE  83. — "In  This  Serf-Life  Their  very  Natures  Have  Been 
Blunted." 

"Not  so  the  wife;  however  brutal  a  tyrant  she  may  be 
chained  to  *  *  *  he  can  claim  from  her  and  enforce  the 
lowest  degradation  of  a  human  being,  that  of  being  made 
the  instrument  of  an  animal  function  contrary  to  her  in- 
clinations. *  *  *  No  amount  of  ill-usage,  without  adult- 
ery superadded,  will  in  England  free  a  wife  from  her  tor- 
mentor."—Mill's  "Subjection  of  Women,"  1869. 

Clitheroe  Case,  1801.— After  the  refusal  of  the  wife  to 


APPENDIX  159 

cohabit,  the  husband  said:  "I  therefore  took  my  wife,  and 
have  since  detained  her  in  my  house,  using  no  more  force 
or  restraint  than  necessary  to  take  her  and  keep  her." 

The  Lord  Chancellor  said:  "I  am  of  opinion  that  no 
Buch  right  or  power  exists  in  law"— and  ordered  the  lady 
to  be  restored  to  her  liberty.— "Woman  Free,"  by  Ellis 
Ethelmer,  p.  144. 

PAGE  95. — The  Monogamic  Marriage. 

"In  attempting  to  estimate  the  moral  worth  of  a  people, 
a  race,  or  a  civilization,  we  are  much  more  enlightened  by 
the  position  given  to  woman  than  by  the  legal  type  of  the 
conjugal  union.  This  type,  besides,  is  usually  more  appar- 
ent than  real.  In  many  civilizations,  both  dead  and  living, 
legal  monogamy  has  for  its  chief  object  the  regulation  of 
succession  and  the  division  of  property."— Letourneau,  "Evo- 
lution of  Marriage,"  p.  18G. 

Conjugal  Unions  Among  the  Animals.— "Among  many  of 
the  animal  species  the  sexual  union  induces  a  durable  asso- 
ciation, having  for  its  object  the  rearing  of  young.  In  no- 
bility, delicacy,  and  devotion  these  unions  do  not  yield 
precedence  to  many  human  unions."— Ibid.,  p.  19. 

"It  is  especially  interesting  to  study  the  various  modes 
of  conjugal  and  familiar  association  among  birds.  This 
may  be  easily  inferred  from  the  ardor,  the  variety  and 
delicacy  they  bring  to  their  amours.  *  *  *  There  are 
some  birds  absolutely  fickle  and  even  debauched— as,  for 
example,  the  little  xVmerican  starling  (Icterus  pecorls), 
which  changes  its  female  from  day  to  day.  *  *  *  Other 
species,  while  they  have  renounced  promiscuity,  are  still 
determined  polygamists.  The  gallinaceae  are  particularly 
addicted  to  this  form  of  conjugal  union,  which  is  so  com- 
mon In  fact  with  mankind,  even  when  highly  civilized  and 
boasting  of  their  practice  of  monogamy.  Our  barndoor 
cock,  vain  and  sensual,  courageous  and  jealous,  Is  a  per- 
fect type  of  the  polygamous  bird."    *    ♦    *— Ibid,  p.  2C>. 

"Nearly  all  the  rapacious  animals,  even  the  stupid  vul- 


i6o  love's  coming-of-age 

tures,  are  monogamous.  The  conjugal  union  of  the  bald- 
headed  eagle  appears  even  to  last  till  the  death  of  one  of 
the  partners."    *    *    * 

"With  the  female  Illinois  parrot  (Psittacus  pertinax) 
widowhood  and  death  are  synonymous,  a  circumstance  rare 
enough  in  the  human  species,  yet  of  which  the  birds  give 
us  more  than  one  example.  When,  after  some  years  of 
conjugal  life,  a  Wheat-ear  happens  to  die,  his  companion 
hardly  survives  him  a  month."— Ibid,  p.  27. 

"Bad  fathers  are  rare  among  birds.  Often  on  the  con- 
trary the  male  rivals  the  female  in  love  for  the  young;  he 
guards  and  feeds  her  during  incubation,  and  sometimes 
even  sits  on  the  eggs  with  her.  The  carrier  pigeon  feeds 
his  female  while  she  is  sitting;  the  Canadian  goose  and  the 
crow  do  the  same;  more  than  that  the  latter  takes  his  com- 
panion's place  at  times,  to  give  her  some  relaxation.  The 
blue  marten  behaves  in  the  same  manner.  Among  many 
species  male  and  female  combine  their  efforts  without  dis- 
tinction of  sex;  they  sit  in  turn,  and  the  one  who  is  free 
takes  the  duty  of  feeding  the  one  who  is  occupied.  This 
is  the  custom  of  the  black-coated  gull,  the  booby  of  Bassan, 
the  great  blue  heron,  and  of  the  black  vulture."— Ibid,  p.  30. 

"In  regard  to  mammals,  there  is  no  strict  relation  be- 
tween the  degree  of  intellectual  development  and  the  form 
of  sexual  union.  The  carnivorous  animals  often  live  in 
couples;  but  this  is  not  an  absolute  rule,  for  the  South 
African  lion  is  frequently  accompanied  by  four  or  five  fe- 
males. Bears,  weasels,  whales,  etc.,  generally  go  in  cou- 
ples. Sometimes  species  that  are  very  nearly  allied  have 
different  conjugal  customs;  thus  the  white-cheeked  pec- 
cary lives  in  troops,  whilst  the  white-ringed  peccary  lives 
in  couples.  There  is  the  same  diversity  in  the  habits  of 
monkeys.  Some  are  polygamous  and  others  monogamous. 
The  Wanderoo  (Macacus  Silenus)  of  India  has  only  one  fe- 
male and  is  faithful  to  her  until  death.  The  Cebus  Capuci- 
nu8,  on  the  contrary,  is  polygamous."— Ibid,  p.  33. 


APPENDIX  16  r 

PAGE  loi.— "The  Destinies  of  a  Life-Time." 
"Unlike  the  Catholic  Church  in  its  dealings  with  novices. 
Society  demands  (in  marriage)  the  ring,  the  parchment,  and 
the  vow  as  a  preliminary  to  the  knowledge  and  experience; 
hence  adulteries,  the  divorce  court,  home-prisons,  and  the 
Increase  of  cant  and  pruriency  In  the  community.  Unless 
a  woman  knows  what  a  man's  body  is  like,  with  its  virile 
needs,  and  realizes  to  the  full  her  own  adult  necessities, 
how  is  it  possible  that  she  can  have  the  faintest  concep- 
tion as  to  whether  the  romantic  passionate  impulse  a  man 
awakens  in  her  is  the  trinity  of  love,  trust  and  reverence, 
which  alone  lays  the  foundations  of  real  marriage?"— Edith 
M.  Ellis,  "A  Noviciate  for  Marriage,"  p.  13. 

PAGE  106. — "Contracts  of  Some  Kind  Will  Still  Be  Made." 
"It  is  therefore  probable  that  a  future  more  or  less  dis- 
tant will  inaugurate  the  regime  of  monogamic  unions, 
freely  contracted,  and,  at  need,  freely  dissolved  by  simple 
mutual  consent,  as  is  already  the  case  with  divorces  in 
various  European  countries— at  Geneva,  In  Belgium,  in 
Roumania,  etc.— and  with  separation  in  Italy.  In  these 
divorces  of  the  future,  the  community  will  only  intervene 
In  order  to  safeguard  that  which  is  of  vital  interest  to  it— 
the  fate  and  the  education  of  the  children.  But  this  evo- 
lution in  the  manner  of  understanding  and  practicing  mar- 
riage will  operate  slowly,  for  it  supposes  an  entire  corre- 
sponding revolution  in  public  opinion;  moreover,  it  requires 
as  a  corollary  profound  modifications  in  the  social  organ- 
Ism."— Letourneau,  "Evolution  of  Marriage,"  p.  358. 

"The  antique  morals  which  hold  woman  as  a  servile 
property  belonging  to  her  husband  still  live  in  many  minds. 
They  will  be  extinguished  by  degrees.  The  matrimonial  con- 
tract will  end  by  being  the  same  kind  of  contract  as  any 
other,  freely  accepted,  freely  maintained,  freely  dissolved; 
but  M'here  constraint  has  disappeared  deception  becomes  an 
unworthy  offence.  Such  will  be  the  opinion  of  a  future 
humanity,  more  elevated  morally  than  ours.     Doubtless  it 


l62  LOVERS  COMING-OF-AGE 

will  no  longer  have  any  tender  indulgence  for  conveniently 
dissimulated  adultery,  but,  on  the  other  hand,  it  will  no 
longer  excuse  the  avenging  husband."— Ibid,  p.  127. 
PAGE  io6. — Contracts  Preliminary  to  a  Permanent  Alliance. 
"The  custom  of  hand-fasting,  rare  now  anywhere  else, 
still  prevails  to  some  extent  in  Iceland.  A  man  and  woman 
contract  to  live  together  for  a  year.  If  at  the  end  of  the 
year  the  parties  agree  thereto,  they  are  married;  if  not, 
they  separate  without  stigma  on  either  side.  The  contract 
may  be  made  conditionally  binding  from  the  first.  It  may 
bind  the  parties  to  marry  in  the  event  of  issue,  or  in  the 
event  of  no  issue,  as  the  case  may  be."— Prof.  Mavor,  "Ice- 
land: Some  Sociological  and  Other  Notes,"  Proceedings 
Philosophical  Society,  Glasgow,  1890-91. 

PAGE  ii8. — A  Certain  Amount  of  Animalism. 

"The  Saviors  of  this,  as  of  every  corrupt  and  stupid 
generation,  must  feel  the  pulse  of  the  adulterer  as  well 
as  that  of  his  victim,  and  stand  clear-eyed  and  honest  as 
pioneers  of  the  new  sexual  renaissance,  which  will  probably 
combine  a  healthy  temperate  animalism  with  Browning's 
vision  of  that  rare  mating  when  soul  lies  by  soul."— Edith 
M.  Ellis,  "A  Noviciate  for  Marriage,"  p.  4. 

"She  gave  him  comprehension  of  the  meaning  of  love:  a 
word  in  many  mouths,  not  often  explained.  With  her, 
wound  in  his  idea  of  her,  he  perceived  it  to  signify  a  new 
start  in  our  existence,  a  finer  shoot  of  the  tree  stoutly 
planted  in  good  gross  earth;  the  senses  running  their  live 
sap,  and  the  minds  companioned,  and  the  spirits  made  one 
by  the  whole-natured  conjunction.  In  sooth,  a  happy  pros- 
pect for  the  sons  and  daughters  of  Earth,  divinely  indicat- 
ing more  than  happiness:  the  speeding  of  us,  compact  of 
what  we  are,  between  the  ascetic  rocks  and  the  sensual 
whirlpools,  to  the  creation  of  certain  nobler  races,  now  very 
dimly  imagined."— George  Meredith's  "Diana  of  the  Cross- 
ways,"  ch.  37. 

THE    END. 


WORKS  OF 


■<^Ad^  4ariytzn^ryG^ 


Except  love  buiUi  the  house  they  labor  in  vain  who  build  it. 


Towards  Democracy 

A  masterpiece,  the  work  of  a  seer.  Gifted  as  poet  and  philoso- 
pher, the  author  has  given  us  one  of  the  great,  if  not  the  greatest, 
work  of  the  nineteenth  century.  It  is  full  of  vivid  pictures  of  the 
soul's  enlightenment.  Its  perusal  gives  the  reader  a  realization  of 
the  divine  in  man — "  the  divine  life  which  incloses  and  redeems  all 
souls."  Through  this  life  every  soul  finds  itself  akin  to  every  other 
soul ;  brotherhood  is  more  than  a  myth  and  democracy  caasss  to 
be  a  dead  letter, 

A.  B,  Stockham,  M.  D.:  I  have  read  and  reread  Towards 
Democracy  with  transports  of  delight,  and  with  a  great  hope  for 
humanity.  As  a  che/a  to  a  i^uru  my  soul  bows  to  thine.  People 
of  the  nineteenth  century  may  be  deaf  to  the  poetic  strains  pealing 
throughout  in  clarion  notes;  they  may  be  blind  to  the  universal 
truths  flashed  in  scintillating  lights,  but  illumined  souls  of  the  com- 
ing centuries  will  honor  the  author  as  one  of  the  chosen,  and  will 
understand  the  message  of  deliverance  he  has  given  to  imprisoned 
souls. 

Chas.  A.  Hamilton:  Towards  Democracy  is  a  revelation! 
Walt  Whitman,  Emerson,  Tennyson,  Ruskin  and  Carlisle  rolled  into 
one !  I  reveled  in  it  like  a  bather  in  the  cool  waves  of  the  ocean.  I 
splashed  through  its  pages  as  a  strong  swimmer  through  the  white 
surges ;  I  drank  it  in  as  a  parched  traveler  drinks  cool  spring  water 
gushing  out  from  under  a  rock ;  I  was  united  with  it  even  as  hydro- 
gen and  oxygen  become  one  in  the  millionth  part  of  a  second. 
Later — I  am  still  reading  Towards  Democracy.  It  thrills  and 
thrills  me  and  1  shed  hot  tears  of  which  1  am  not  ashamed. 

W*  L.  Sinton:  Towards  Democracy  stands  side  by  side  with 
the  Bible,  and  to  him  who  has  the  eye  to  see  and  the  ear  to  hear,  it 
contains  a  key  to  all  the  problems  of  life. 

Cecelia  Evans:  I  have  Towards  Democracy  beside  my  bed, 
and  read  something  in  it  every  night  and  some  mornings.  I  can 
never,  never  tell  by  word  or  pen  the  good  that  book  has  done  me.    I 


"  U7iois  the  f>oct  7vhoi>i  love  has  made  strong,  strong.  STRt)NG,  717///  all 
strength  .'" 


never  pick  it  up  that  my  courage  is  not  renewed.  His  "Joy,  Joy" 
would  kill  any  case  of  blues.  I  always  felt  that  these  little  daily 
tasks  were  so  hard,  and  thought  if  one  could  only  get  out  in  the  world 
and  do  something  one  might  be  saved:  but  his  "  Sweet  are  the  Uses 
of  Life,"  with  his  promise  that  the  Lover  will  come  wlien  we  are 
about  our  little  homely  tasks,  has  been  a  revelation.  I  never  did 
care  much  for  housework,  but  even  washing  the  dishes  has  its 
blessing  now.  I  let  the  present  hour  bring  its  gift  and  am  not  fret- 
ting about  the  future. 

Over  300  pages,  bound  in  cloth.         -         -         Prepaid,  $1.50 


A  Visit  to  a  Qnani 

With  an  Introduction  by  Alice  B.  Stockham,  M.  D. 

A  vivid  pen  picture  of  oriental  thought  and  teaching,  containing 
in  a  few  pages  what  one  often  fails  to  find  by  searching  many  vol- 
umes. A  Gnani  is  one  who  knows,  a  Knower  ;  in  other  words,  one 
who  has  a  consciousness  of  the  greater  or  universal  life  which  Car- 
penter calls  the  Kosmic  Consciousness,  which  is  the  higher  self  of 
Theosophists,  the  Infinite  I  of  Fichte,  the  Noumsna  of  Kant,  the 
Divine  Mind  of  Christian  Religion. 

In  a  concise  and  comprehensive  manner,  the  author  presents  the 
practical  esotericism  of  the  East,  giving  points  of  likeness  to  western 
philosophy.  Man  loses  his  life  to  gain  it,  loses  his  consciousness  of 
and  dependence  upon  physical  and  material  life  to  gain  a  conscious- 
ness of  the  universal  life — a  Kosmic  consciousness. 

Health  Culture:  The  book  contains  many  interesting  facts  and 
anecdotes  concerning  Gurus,  Adepts,  Yogis,  etc.,  besides  it  is  a  study 
of  the  duality  of  mind.  To  gain  the  power  of  blotting  out  the  per- 
sonal consciousness,  so  that  the  Kosmic  consciousness  shall  domi- 
nate— one  becomes  a  Gnani  or  one  who  knows. 

Sidney  Flower:  In  the  domain  of  occultism  this  is  clearly  the 
book  of  the  year.  It  is  interesting  to  note  thaf  the  East  and  the 
West  touch  hands  in  the  matter  of  self-development.     We  simply 


/  Ti-in  have  none  that  7viU  not  open  his  door  to  ali— treating  others  as  I  have 
treated  him . 


make  our  will  the  master  of  the  mind,  and  by  thus  subjugating  the 
noise  of  the  machinery,  we  make  it  possible  to  hear  and  attend  to 
the  Voice  in  the  Silence. 

Psychic  Review:  As  one  reads  this  vivid  pen  picture,  his  inter, 
est  is  held  throughout,  and  he  realizes  that  there  is  a  life  more  won- 
derful and  perhaps  more  real  than  the  material  life. 

Chicago  Chronicle:  A  Gnani  is  one  who  has  consciousness  of 
the  Universal  Life — it  is  the  absolute  Ego  of  Fichte,  the  self-affirm- 
ing Activity  of  Schilling,  the  Geist  of  Hegel,  the  Unknowable  of 
Spencer,  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  of  Christ.  The  use  of  the  higher 
faculties  is  acquired  only  after  a  long  training  and  according  to 
laws  peculiarly  their  own.  This  must  not  result  in  oblivion,  but  in 
a  divine  consciousness  without  the  limitations  of  thought. 

Illustrated,  bound  in  Vellum  de  Luxe.        -        Prepaid,  $1.00 


Love's  Coming  of  Age 

A  comprehensive  and  philosophical  treatise  on  Sexual  Science 
and  Marriage.  In  this  book  Edward  Carpenter  has  done  his  work 
well  and  all  will  peruse  it  with  interest  and  profit.  It  evinces  a 
breadth  of  thought  and  research  seldom  found  in  treating  these  deli- 
cate subjects.  Prepaid.  $1.25 

Other  works  by  Edward  Carpenter  are  England's  Ideals:  Civili- 
zation, its  Cause  and  Cure  ;  Eros  and  Psyche;  Angel  Wings;  Un- 
known People,  etc.,  all  of  which  can  be  ordered  through  our  house. 

Carpenter  may  be  considered  a  leader  in  the  philosophy  of  life — 
at  leasf.  every  student  of  economics  or  social  ethics  must  give  his 
works  more  than  a  passing  perusal. 


Stockham  Publishing  Co. 

56  Fifth  Avenue 
Authorized  Agents  CHICAGO 


hA^ 


University  of 
Connecticut 

Libraries 


39153020708063 


